Uber autonomous driving unit used strange term for people and animals

Uber
CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.
Getty

• Employees in Uber‘s
  self-driving unit have referred to a human and animal one
  of its cars might hit as “a squishy thing,” sources told
  Business Insider.
• Uber employees told Business Insider that the company’s
  autonomous driving unit had in its test vehicles turned off
  emergency braking features that could avoid collisions with
  humans or animals before a fatal accident that killed a
  pedestrian in Arizona in March.
• According to employees and documents viewed by Business
  Insider, the decision to turn off the emergency braking
  features was motivated in part by a desire to impress CEO
  Dara
  Khosrowshahi with a ride in a self-driving vehicle that was
  originally scheduled to happen around April.

Employees in Uber’s self-driving unit have referred to a
human and animal one of its cars might hit as “a squishy
thing,” sources
told Business Insider.

Uber employees told Business Insider that the company’s
autonomous driving unit had turned off emergency braking features
in its test vehicles that could avoid collisions with humans or
animals before a
fatal accident that killed a pedestrian in Arizona in
March. 

Read more:
Tesla, Uber, Waymo, and Cruise are facing a major reality check
as problems mount for their self-driving car
tech

According to employees and documents viewed by Business Insider,
the decision to turn off the emergency braking features was
motivated in part by a desire to impress CEO Dara Khosrowshahi
with a ride in a self-driving vehicle that was originally
scheduled to happen around April. The high-pressure event was
referred to as “Dara’s ride” or “Dara’s run” inside the company.

After the March accident, Uber suspended the
testing of its autonomous-driving software. The
company once
intended to include self-driving vehicles in its
ride-hailing service in 2019, but backed off that goal after the
accident. It has just recently asked
for permission to resume testing vehicles with
their autonomous software in Pennsylvania.

Read more about Uber’s chaotic self-driving program
here.