For some safety experts, Uber’s self-driving taxi test isn’t something to hail

Uber’s decision to bring self-driving taxis to the streets of Pittsburgh on Wednesday is raising alarms among a swath of safety experts who say that the technology is not nearly ready for prime time.

The experiment will launch even though Pennsylvania has yet to pass basic laws that permit the testing of self-driving cars or rules that would govern what would happen in a crash. Uber is also not required to pass along any data from its vehicles to regulators.

Meanwhile, researchers note, autonomous cars have been thrown off by bridges, a particular problem in Pittsburgh, which has more bridges than any other major US city.

“They are essentially making the commuters the guinea pigs,” said Joan Claybrook, a consumer-protection advocate and former head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. “Of course there are going to be crashes. You can do the exact same tests without having average citizens in your car.”

But advocates of autonomous vehicles say that the technology might never have happened if companies had to wait for governments to pass rules first. With nearly 1.3 million Americans dying in car crashes every year, largely due to driver errors, technologists have stressed the critical need to push forward on the testing of driverless cars on actual roads.