TOKYO — Toyota Motor Corp. said it was temporarily suspending public road testing of its advanced autonomous driving technology after a self-driving Uber test car killed an Arizona pedestrian in the first known fatality involving a fully autonomous vehicle.
The pause in testing affects vehicles operating in chauffeur mode — Toyota's in-house term for fully autonomous driving — a Toyota spokesman said Tuesday.
The decision suspends only operations in the U.S. and was ordered by the Toyota Research Institute, the Silicon Valley-based unit researching autonomous driving and robots. Toyota did not say when it would resume public road tests.
"We are intentionally waiting to see what the investigation reveals," Toyota spokesman Brian Lyons said of the ongoing police probe into Sunday night's Uber accident.
"We just want to give our drivers time to reflect about how important their jobs are."
Public testing of fully autonomous vehicles will continue in Japan, another spokesman said.
Toyota said it suspended U.S. public road trials out of consideration for the human drivers who sit behind the wheel with the duty of overriding the autonomous system if something goes wrong. The pause was not triggered by concerns about the technology, Toyota said.
"We cannot speculate on the cause of the incident or what it may mean to the automated driving industry going forward," the company said in an emailed statement to Automotive News.
"Because we feel the incident may have an emotional effect on our test drivers, we have decided to temporarily pause our Chauffeur mode testing on public roads."
Uber's decision
The Uber vehicle, which was supervised by a human safety driver at the time of the accident, struck the woman March 18 as she was walking her bike across the street outside a crosswalk.
Uber has suspended pilots in all cities following the deadly crash.
The police chief of Tempe, Ariz., where the crash took place, said an early investigation found that the collision would have been difficult to avoid. "I suspect preliminarily it appears that the Uber would likely not be at fault in this accident, either," said Chief Sylvia Moir. The statement appeared in a report by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Toyota has been doing on-road testing in Michigan and California. The Japanese carmaker declined to say how many fully autonomous vehicles it tests on public roads.
"TRI has historically not disclosed the size of our test fleet. TRI can say our number of test vehicles is intentionally small to allow for flexibility as our technology and capability rapidly advances."
Childhood trauma
As a boy, TRI head Gil Pratt witnessed his best friend being run down and killed in the street by a car. The tragic experience stayed with Pratt, who was hired by Toyota in 2015 after working as program manager for robotics at the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Pratt is credited with convincing Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda that self-driving cars have the potential to make such accidents a thing of the past.
Japan's next-biggest automakers, Nissan and Honda, were largely quiet on the accident.
Nissan spokesman Nicholas Maxfield declined to say whether Japan's No. 2 automaker is reviewing testing protocols or considering a suspension of in the wake of the Uber accident.
Nissan Motor Co., which is making autonomous driving a key pillar of its growth strategy, issued a statement reaffirming its commitment to safety.
Nissan commitment
"Autonomous vehicle testing protocol includes a trained safety driver at the controls constantly engaged with the vehicle and a test engineer in the rear seat to operate the system," Nissan said in the statement. "Nissan is committed to the safety and security of our customers and their passengers."
As of late 2017, Nissan and its alliance partner Renault had a seven-vehicle fleet for testing on local roads around their Silicon Valley research center: three Nissan Leaf electric vehicles, two Infiniti Q50 sedans and two Renault Zoe EVs.
This month, Nissan began a two-week trial of a robotaxi service in downtown Yokohama, Japan. That trial used two modified Nissan Leafs.
Nissan did not respond to a query about how many cars it currently has in public trials.
Honda spokeswoman Sanae Tanaka declined to comment on measures Honda might be taking in the aftermath of the Uber accident. Honda said it does not disclose the location of its public testing of autonomous driving vehicles nor the number of how many vehicles it has.
You can reach Hans Greimel at hgreimel@crain.com -- Follow Hans on Twitter: @hansgreimel
