Yahoo Autos Uber Lays Off Safety Drivers amid Revamp of Self-Driving Program
For Uber, the fallout continues from a crash in Arizona in which a self-driving Uber vehicle struck and killed a pedestrian.
Approximately 100 staff members who had worked as vehicle operators at the company’s Pittsburgh hub have been laid off. In their roles, they had been tasked with monitoring the performance of autonomous vehicles during public-road testing.
In some ways, the layoffs were expected. The Pittsburgh vehicle operators had been on the payroll for the past four months even though Uber’s self-driving vehicles remained grounded since the crash, which happened in March in Tempe, Arizona. Uber had already shuttered its Arizona operations and terminated staff members there in the wake of the crash.
But the Pittsburgh layoffs don’t necessarily spell the further winding down of Uber’s self-driving program. Despite the layoffs, an Uber spokesperson said, the company remains committed to building self-driving technology and restarting its testing on public roads “in the coming months.”
What the layoffs signal is that Uber is revamping the way it uses safety drivers. Going forward, employees who function as safety drivers will need higher qualifications to get behind the wheel. Uber says it is hiring 55 Mission Specialists, trained drivers who will monitor vehicles during public-road testing and during closed-course testing at Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group headquarters in Pittsburgh.
Previously, vehicle operators only drove and monitored automated cars on public roads, but not on test tracks. Specifics aren’t yet available on what other competencies and qualifications the Mission Specialists must possess, but the company says they will require advanced training. Mission Specialists are technical experts who can provide prompt feedback to the system engineers, the company said.
It’s unclear whether Uber might supply that training in a structured program or if applicants must already hold certain skills or qualifications, such as a commercial driver’s license. Uber says its former vehicle operators are welcome to apply for the new positions.
The training and qualifications of Uber’s safety drivers have been a central focus of multiple investigations stemming from the March crash, the first in which a fully automated vehicle was involved in a deadly crash.
Although Uber’s self-driving system failed to classify the victim, Elaine Herzberg, as a pedestrian, the human safety driver who should have been serving as a backup, Rafaela Vasquez, was instead watching The Voice on her cellphone, according to police documents released in June.
Uber’s policies prohibit the use of cellphones behind the wheel, but the revelation nonetheless brought further questions about how the company trains its safety drivers, why it uses a single safety driver when other companies often use two during public-road testing, and its procedures for vetting safety-driver candidates.
The change likely comes as part of an ongoing review of Uber’s policies and procedures being conducted by former National Transportation Safety Board chairman Christopher Hart, who was hired in May to advise the company on its overall safety culture. A report on those recommendations is forthcoming, and testing will likely not resume until it is completed.
Police Say Uber Operator Was Watching The Voice at Time of Self-Driving Crash
Uber Says It Will Resume Self-Driving Tests; Pittsburgh Is Peeved
Fatal Uber Crash Reveals the Shortcoming of Both Human and Robot Drivers
But the biggest lesson for Uber may already be apparent: Entrusting its entire self-driving program, not to mention the safety of other road users, to backup drivers with little expertise was a bad idea.
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