Uber Wants Delay to Pittsburgh Legislation

On Tuesday 6th December, PennDOT released proposed new guidelines that would let the state access Uber’s data about how driverless cars perform and could dictate on what kinds of roads they can be tested, in certain instances. They were developed by the Pennsylvania Autonomous Vehicles Testing Policy Task Force, which includes government regulators, technical experts, academics and business leaders, including those from Uber and General Motors.

Uber sees the guidelines as useful for helping shape legislation, but potentially hampering testing of such vehicles in the meantime, and wants PennDOT to wait for legislation to be passed before it attempts to regulate such testing. Uber has been testing driverless cars on the streets of Pittsburgh for the past few weeks

The policies would require Uber to submit testing proposals to PennDOT and sign contracts confirming the cars meet federal and state standards, as well as notifying the state before the autonomous vehicles are tested without human drivers. At present, Uber’s test vehicles have a human operator ready to intervene in case of emergency.

Furthermore, PennDOT wants to access data that would let it investigate crashes involving such vehicles, and keep tabs on how far, how long they’re driven, and where, a move which is seen as inhibiting the ability of the testers to improve their technology, as well as noting that Pennsylvania is the only state requiring such contracts, contracts which are not seen to significantly improve safety.