Uber Ignored Multiple Warnings Ahead of Fatal Self-Driving Car Crash, Report Says

A manager reportedly notified executives of issues in an email before the crash.

Uber plans to resume testing self-driving cars on public roads eight months after a fatal crash, but new allegations related to that crash are now being reported. According to The Information, an employee warned of problems with Uber's autonomous-driving tech days before a car struck and killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona.

According to the report, Robbie Miller, a manager in the self-driving car program's testing operations group, sent an email to multiple Uber executives and lawyers warning that test cars were "routinely in accidents resulting in damage. This is usually the result of poor behavior of the operator or the AV technology."

Miller allegedly referenced an incident in Pittsburgh in which a prototype autonomous car swerved off the road and onto a sidewalk. Miller's email said the incident was "essentially ignored" for days until Miller raised it to the attention of other managers. The email also said that it took two weeks to investigate an incident that took place toward the end of 2017, in which an Uber test car nearly collided with another vehicle. read more »

Volkswagen Illegally Sold Pre-Production Test Cars Instead of Crushing Them

The cars—riddled with defects big and small—were never certified for road use.

Developing a new car takes time, money, and a whole fleet of pre-production test models, all of which are usually crushed in the end. After all, they're full of tiny flaws and minute differences compared to the finished product, and they're not certified for road use. But according to a new report in Der Spiegel, that didn't stop Volkswagen from illegally selling at least 6,700 test models to unsuspecting buyers in Europe and North America over the past decade.

Volkswagen Group is still reeling from the fumes of Dieselgate, the sprawling emissions scandal that continues to haunt the world's largest automaker with billions in fines and criminal charges for executives three years after it emerged. This latest news isn't connected to that folly, but its details—now confirmed by the company—might be just as damaging to VW's tenuous grip on the public's trust. read more »