San Francisco hits the brakes on self-driving Uber cars after one reportedly caught running a red light

Brett T. | 7:23 PM on December 14, 2016

There’s an exciting new way to get around in San Francisco that might be a little bit too exciting, if an incident captured on camera Wednesday is what people suspect.

Welp. This happened. https://t.co/opAatmtjAJ

— WIRED (@WIRED) December 14, 2016

Taxi dashcam video appears to show a self-driving Uber running a (very) red light in San Francisco https://t.co/eKy2RmcYCh h/t @sfexaminer pic.twitter.com/z8gf1FvhDg

— Laura J. Nelson ? (@laura_nelson) December 14, 2016

Uber launched a fleet of self-driving cars in the city Wednesday, and it wasn’t long after that the San Francisco Examiner obtained dash-cam video that appears to show one of the driverless cars blowing through a traffic light that had turned red seconds before.

“In its blog Wednesday, Uber wrote it launched self-driving vehicles in California without self-testing permits from the DMV because it has drivers in the vehicles,” the Examiner reports, adding that the self-driving cars “also have Uber drivers and engineers as backups at the wheel of the car, according to various news reports, leaving it unclear as to why no one simply hit the brakes.”

https://twitter.com/MikeIsaac/status/809166825149911040

Yeah. And Uber's argument for not getting a permit (+not reporting any data) is based on human oversight… https://t.co/8QCzyi5v8A pic.twitter.com/ifeb9mt6XJ

— Laura J. Nelson ? (@laura_nelson) December 14, 2016

The video must be getting around quickly, because the San Francisco Gate now reports that Uber is going to need that state permit after all.