Incident 8: Uber Autonomous Cars Running Red Lights

Description: Uber vehicles equipped with technology allowing for autonomous driving running red lights in San Francisco street testing.

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Alleged: Uber developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed pedestrians and Motorists.

Incident Stats

Incident ID
8
Report Count
10
Incident Date
2014-08-15
Editors
Sean McGregor

CSET Taxonomy Classifications

Taxonomy Details

Full 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

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.

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