Incident 8: Uber Autonomous Cars Running Red Lights
Entities
View all entitiesIncident Stats
CSET Taxonomy Classifications
Taxonomy DetailsFull Description
Uber's autonomous vehicles have been recorded running red lights on two occasions in a pilot program on the streets of San Francisco, California. A witness, Christoper Koff, reported seeing the AI enabled Volvo XC90 SUV pass through a red light three seconds after the light had turned red and while a pedestrian was in the crosswalk. There were no injuries or collisions. Uber has denied the claim this was the system's error, citing human operator error and suspending the driver. Two Uber employees reported to the New York Times that the fault was of the AI system.
Short Description
Uber vehicles equipped with technology allowing for autonomous driving running red lights in San Francisco street testing.
Severity
Negligible
AI System Description
Self-driving autonomous Uber vehicles
System Developer
Uber
Sector of Deployment
Transportation and storage
Relevant AI functions
Perception, Cognition, Action
AI Techniques
autonomous vehicles, LIDAR, radar
AI Applications
traffick flow forecasting, autonomous driving
Location
San Francisco, CA
Named Entities
Uber, Volvo
Technology Purveyor
Uber, Volvo
Beginning Date
12-2016
Ending Date
12-2016
Near Miss
Near miss
Intent
Accident
Lives Lost
No
Infrastructure Sectors
Transportation
Data Inputs
Traffick patterns, environment surroundings, human driver input
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
An Uber equipped to drive itself ran a red light in San Francisco’s SOMA neighborhood Wednesday morning, per a YouTube video apparently shot from a local Luxor cab and reported by The Examiner:
In the video, a Volvo XC90 SUV decked out in t…
Uber’s San Francisco trial run of its self-driving service last Tuesday is catching people’s attention. Unfortunately, it might not exactly be the kind of hype that Uber hoped for. As previously noted, the ride-hailing service company’s aut…
Company insists traffic violations in San Francisco are the result of ‘human error’ by drivers who can take control if needed, but witness account contradicts this
An autonomous Uber malfunctioned while in “self-driving mode” and caused a n…
Uber Denounces Traffic Light Laws After Self-Driving Car Runs Red Light
Halting Problem Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 23, 2016
SOMA, SAN FRANCISCO — Uber isn’t exactly known for following the rules. The ride-sharing company recently …
Last December, a self-driving Uber was caught on camera running a red light in San Francisco, shortly after the vehicles began testing on the roads. While Uber claimed at the time that a driver was at fault, a report from The New York Times…
James Martin/CNET
Call it another pothole for Uber.
Remember that taxicab dash-cam video of an Uber robocar running a red light in San Francisco last December? (It's embedded below.) Uber -- which had put the self-driving cars on the street…
Continuing a week-plus of embarrassments and bad news for Uber, the New York Times on Friday reported that traffic violations by the company’s self-driving cars were caused by problems with the cars’ mapping programs, and not, as the compan…
Despite statements to the press that "human error" was to blame for its vehicles running a series of red lights in San Francisco, the company admitted internally that it was the car that was in autonomous mode when it failed to stop at the …
A taxi’s dashcam caught this self-driving car running a red light on Third Street in December. Uber originally said a human was driving. (Courtesy photo)
Uber told reporters that a self-driving car shown on video running a red light in San …
Science fiction is lousy with tales of artificial intelligence run amok. There's HAL 9000, of course, and the nefarious Skynet system from the "Terminator" films. Last year, the sinister AI Ultron came this close to defeating the Avengers, …
