Uber resumes testing self-driving cars nine months after deadly crash

Enlarge / An Uber self-driving car drives down 5th Street on March 28, 2017 in San Francisco, California. (credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Uber is returning to public roads in Pittsburgh nine months after an Uber self-driving car struck and killed pedestrian Elaine Herzberg in Tempe, Arizona. However, Uber’s new testing program will be massively scaled back from the one it had a year ago.

At the start of 2018, Uber had an extensive testing program that operated in both the Pittsburgh and Phoenix metropolitan areas. Dozens of Uber cars were driving around both cities, racking up more than two million miles of testing under the supervision of safety drivers.

But the whole program came screeching to a halt in March, when a malfunctioning Uber car crashed into Herzberg. In-car video seemed to show the safety driver glancing down at her lap for several seconds before the crash; records later revealed that she was streaming a television show on her phone at the time.