Uber cancels self-driving car trial in San Francisco after state forces it off road

California has forced Uber to remove its self-driving vehicles from the road, canceling the company's controversial pilot program in San Francisco after a week of embarrassing reports of traffic violations and repeated legal threats from state officials. The department of motor vehicles (DMV) announced late Wednesday that it had revoked the registration of 16 autonomous Uber cars, which the corporation deployed without proper permits last week and which were caught on numerous occasions running red lights. Uber, which had previously declared that its rejection of government regulations was an "important issue of principle", confirmed that it has stopped its pilot in a statement, adding: "We're now looking at where we can redeploy these cars but remain 100 percent committed to California and will be redoubling our efforts to develop workable statewide rules." DMV officials and state attorney attorney general Kamala Harris have noted that Uber must get a testing permit to test its Volvo XC90s, which are navigated by a computer system but have a driver in the front seat who can intervene when needed. "It was determined that the registrations were improperly issued for these vehicles because they were not properly marked as test vehicles," the DMV said in a statement.