Uber Establishes Oversight Board for Self-driving Development

Uber has formed an independent board tasked with overseeing its autonomous vehicle program. As outsiders, they’ll have no official authority within the company. But the six-member group will have direct access to executive years, and will be using them to advise the business on how best to test and deploy new technologies.

Dubbed the Self-Driving Safety and Responsibility Board, the group was formed after one of Uber’s test vehicles struck and killed a pedestrian in March 2018. An external review commissioned by the company following the incident recommended the board’s formation, with support from the NHTSA.

According to Automotive News, the committee’s makeup was recently finalized:

Board members include Shailen Bhatt, president of the Intelligent Transportation Society of America; Adrian Lund, former president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety; Victoria Nneji, robotics fellow and assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Duke University.

Also on the board is physician and former NHTSA chief Jeffrey Runge, now president of Biologue Inc., a North Carolina biodefense and medical preparedness consulting firm.

Rounding out the panel are two members who bring an aviation-minded perspective that Uber wanted on the board: David Carbaugh, former chief pilot of flight operations safety at Boeing, and George Snyder, president of GHS Aviation Group.

Roughly a year ago, the law firm LeClairRyan issued a report recommending Uber adopt some of the practices in place at the Federal Aviation Administration — as it has a few autonomous protocols already on the books. Among the tools the ride-hailing business adopted was a new way for employees to submit safety concerns, modeled from the Aviation Safety Reporting Program.

While Uber definitely wants to ensure safer testing in the future, this is also a bit of damage control. Shortly before the fatal crash in Tempe, AZ, from March of 2018, manager Robbie Miller had tried to tell the company its test mules were underperforming. In an email to his superiors, Miller reported that the firm’s AVs were “routinely in accidents resulting in damage” while expressed fears over the preparedness of the company’s safety drivers.

“We believe that this panel of outside industry experts will offer valuable independent advice as Uber ATG leads the safe development and deployment of self-driving technology,” Uber said in a statement. It also noted that board findings and recommendations will not be made public. While we’d prefer having a pipeline into those discussions, it’s understandable the business doesn’t want to air its dirty laundry.

[Image: MikeDotta/Shutterstock]