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Uber to stop development of self-driving trucks

The company will focus on unmanned vehicles

© AP Photo/Eric Risberg

NEW-YORK, July 31. /TASS/. Uber will stop development of self-driving trucks and instead focus its efforts on self-driving cars, the US based company said in a statement on Monday.

"We recently took the important step of returning to public roads in Pittsburgh, and as we look to continue that momentum, we believe having our entire team’s energy and expertise focused on this effort is the best path forward," Eric Meyhofer, head of Uber Advanced Technologies Group, said in an emailed statement.

Uber started developing unmanned trucks in the summer of 2016. The first tests were conducted in California and Arizona, as well as at the training ground in Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania).

Earlier this year, the company completely stopped testing unmanned cars in Arizona after an accident that led to the death of a pedestrian.

The accident occurred in the city of Tempe on March 18. An unmanned Volvo car, owned by Uber struck and killed a woman who crossed the road in the wrong place. The police checked the video from the surveillance cameras installed on the car, which showed that the woman appeared in front of the vehicle unexpectedly. She died in the hospital from the injuries.

The US media stressed that this incident was the first known case of the death of a pedestrian as a result of an accident involving an unmanned vehicle. After that, Uber announced that it had decided to temporarily stop testing its self-driving vehicles in Tempe, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Phoenix, Arizona and Toronto, the Canadian province of Ontario.

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