Uber's Self-driving Fleet At Odds With California Law

The new service, combined with Uber’s new fleet of vehicles, gave passengers the option of requesting a self-driving car when booking a journey. The car would still be accompanied by a safety driver. 

Uber has claimed that it will defy the regulators and continue to test its new vehicles on the streets of San Francisco without a permit, claiming that it doesn’t require one due to the presence of the safety driver at the wheel. The DMV states that it is the use of “autonomous technology” that necessitates the permit, but Uber counters that their cars do not yet constitute “autonomous technology” because of the human driver. The operators aren’t required to have their hands on the wheel itself but are on hand to assist, and are therefore similar to other forms of assistive driving technology, such as Tesla’s autopilot feature which doesn’t require a permit.

Just before the order to obtain a permit was given, a video was uploaded to YouTube of an Uber self-driving car running a red light, an incident that the company has attributed to “human error” and has said it is investigating.