Hitting the Books: Why Travis Kalanick got Uber into the self-driving car game

If you thought rocket science was hard, try training a computer to safely change lanes while behind the wheel of a full-size SUV in heavy drivetime traffic. Autonomous vehicle developers have faced myriad similar challenged over the past three decades but nothing, it seems, turns the wheels of innovation quite like a bit of good, old-fashioned competition -- one which DARPA was only more than happy to provide. In Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car, Insider senior editor and former Wired Transportation editor, Alex Davies takes the reader on an immersive tour of DARPA's "Grand Challenges" -- the agency's autonomous vehicle trials which drew top talents from across academia and the private sector in effort to spur on the state of autonomous vehicle technology -- as well as profiles many of the elite engineers that took place in the competitions. In the excerpt below however Davies recalls how, back in 2014, then-CEO Travis Kalanick steered Uber into the murky waters of autonomous vehicle technology, setting off a flurry of acquihires, buyouts, furious R&D efforts, and one fatal accident -- only to end up selling off the division this past December. Excerpt from Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car by Alex Davies.