A self-driving car owned by Uber was involved in an accident yesterday morning which resulted in the death of a pedestrian. As the investigation continues, Uber has grounded its entire fleet of self-driving cars until further notice. Toyota, the car manufacturer that just until a few days ago was said to be in negotiations to source self-driving car technology from Uber, has now decided to stop testing its self-driving cars on public roads as well.
Toyota has confirmed that it’s halting the tests of its “Chauffeur” self-driving tech on public roads in the United States in the wake of yesterday’s fatal accident. The car was in autonomous mode at the time of the accident and had a human safety driver behind the wheel.
“Because we feel the incident may have an emotional effect on our test drivers, we have decided to temporarily pause our Chauffeur mode testing on public roads,” said a spokesman for the company in a statement provided to Bloomberg, adding that Toyota can not speculate on the cause of yesterday’s crash or what it might mean for the future of autonomous cars.
Toyota has been testing its self-driving cars on public roads in Michigan and California. It has only put out a small number of cars on public roads so that they can be rapidly updated as the technology improves.
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