Nearly two years after an Uber Technologies Inc. vehicle struck and killed a pedestrian in Arizona, the riding-hailing giant has once again obtained a permit to test autonomous vehicles in California.

The 2018 accident, which was first blamed on the pedestrian, revealed that Uber’s technology, at least at the time, was deficient and hadn’t been programmed to detect jaywalkers.

Uber suspended its autonomous vehicle testing for nine months after the accident. It returned with limited testing in December 2018 but also let its California testing permit lapse.

The new permit, issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles, allows Uber once again to test its technology on the streets of its hometown, San Francisco. Uber said, however, that it does not have immediate plans to engage in autonomous driving in the state, adding it would notify regulatory stakeholders before doing so.

“San Francisco is a great city to gather key learnings for self-driving technology given its complex and ever-changing environment,” an Uber spokesperson told VentureBeat. “While we do not have an update as to exactly when we’ll resume autonomous testing, receiving our testing permit through the California DMV is a critical step towards that end in Uber’s home city.”

Despite issues in the past, Uber partially spun off its self-driving car unit in April, taking $1 billion in funding from Toyota, Denso and the SoftBank Vision Fund in the process. The deal valued the Uber Advanced Technologies Group, the division tasked with creating the technology, at $7.25 billion.

Fully autonomous vehicles remain somewhat of a tech utopian dream, but for Uber the need for self-driving vehicles differs from carmakers exploring the same technology. Uber, whih has never been profitable, likely needs self-driving cars to become profitable because they would eliminate the need to pay drivers to transport people in the process. The technology has the potential to be applied to food delivery as well, such as with Uber Eats.

Photo: Dllu/Wikimedia Commons