California has forced Uber to remove its self-driving vehicles from the road, canceling the company’s controversial pilot program in San Francisco after a week of embarrassing reports of traffic violations and repeated legal threats from state officials.
The California department of motor vehicles (DMV) announced late on Wednesday that it had revoked the registration of 16 autonomous Uber cars, which the corporation deployed without proper permits last week and which were caught on numerous occasions running red lights.
Uber, which had previously declared that its rejection of government regulations was an “important issue of principle”, confirmed that it has stopped its pilot in a statement, adding: “We’re now looking at where we can redeploy these cars but remain 100 percent committed to California and will be redoubling our efforts to develop workable statewide rules.”
