Report: Uber self-driving team was preparing for CEO demo before fatal crash

Enlarge (credit: Uber)

We’ve known since May that serious flaws in Uber’s self-driving software contributed to the fatal crash that killed pedestrian Elaine Herzberg in Tempe, Arizona, back in March. For example, Uber had disabled emergency braking on its vehicles to make its cars’ driving behavior less erratic. A new report from Business Insider’s Julie Bort sheds light on why Uber’s software may have been so flawed at the time of the March crash.

In early 2018, Uber’s Advanced Technology Group—the team developing self-driving cars—was focused on getting ready for a forthcoming demo ride with Uber’s recently hired CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi. Business Insider reports that in November 2017, Uber circulated a document asking engineers on the self-driving car team to think about “rider experience metrics.” Engineers were encouraged to try to limit the number of “bad experiences” to one per ride.

Two days later, another email went out announcing that Uber was “turning off the car’s ability to make emergency decisions on its own like slamming on the brakes or swerving hard.”