Uber is '5,000 times worse than Google's Waymo at self-driving cars'

According to driving statistics published by California, Uber is the worst of six major self-driving car companies testing its vehicles in the state. The minicab firm experienced a "disengagement" – when the automated system forces the human driver/passenger to take over control of the vehicle – once every mile driven, with a total of 20,354 miles clocked up before it was banned from testing in the state. By contrast, at the top of the table was Waymo, Google's sibling company, with one disengagement every 5,128 miles driven, and more than half a million miles driven in the last 12 months. The figures shed new light on the ongoing lawsuit between Waymo and Uber. The latter company is accused of stealing intellectual property after it acquired a self-driving truck company, Otto, which had been founded by Anthony Levandowski, a former Waymo employee. The technology in question is the design of the lidar array, the light-based imaging system that sits on the top of self-driving cars to help them see the world around them.