It was little more than a year ago that Arizona governor Doug Ducey welcomed the arrival of Uber?s self-driving vehicles on the state’s public roads with unabashed enthusiasm. On Monday, in the wake of a fatal crash, Ducey has suspended Uber?s autonomous fleet from testing and operating within the state?s borders, citing the company?s ?unquestionable failure? in the collision that killed Elaine Herzberg in Tempe earlier this month.
The National Transportation Safety Board, as well as other governmental agencies and law-enforcement officials, is still investigating the cause of the crash, which was the first fatality involving fully autonomous technology. But Ducey said he has seen enough to prohibit further Uber self-driving operations. ?Arizona will not tolerate any less than an unequivocal commitment to public safety,? he wrote in a letter announcing the ban to Uber chief executive officer Dara Khosrowshahi on Monday. Uber had already grounded its fleet of self-driving cars and trucks in the state and elsewhere following the crash, in which Tempe Police Department officials say the company?s car did not attempt to brake for Herzberg. She was walking a bicycle across a multiple-lane arterial road at roughly 10 p.m. on March 18 when she was struck by one of Uber’s retrofitted Volvo XC90s, which had a safety driver on board at the time. But the governor?s suspension signals a new era for the testing of self-driving vehicles in Arizona, and perhaps an overall cha...