Uber’s former head of self-driving cars put safety second

“We don’t need redundant brakes & steering, or a fancy new car, we need better software,” then-Google engineer Anthony Levandowski wrote in an email to Larry Page in January 2016. “To get to that better software faster we should deploy the first 1000 cars asap. I don’t understand why we are not doing that. Part of our team seems to be afraid to ship.” Shortly thereafter, Levandowski would leave to found his own self-driving trucking company, which was quickly acquired by Uber.

Anthony Levandowski wasn’t the only Uber employee who took the “move fast and break things” attitude to an alarming place, but many of his comments are now a matter of public record thanks to Waymo v. Uber, the lawsuit filed against the ride-sharing company for Levandowski’s alleged theft of 14,000 documents and the misappropriation of Google trade secrets. Uber fired Levandowski in 2017 and settled the lawsuit in February 2018. Uber has a new CEO who appears to be sincere in his desire to transform the corporate culture created by Travis Kalanick. But the company may be haunted by Levandowski’s legacy for some time, especially in the wake of the self-driving car accident in Tempe, Arizona that left a pedestrian dead.

During the trial in February, lawyers for Waymo — the rebranded Google self-driving car project — painted a picture of a problem employee who clashed with his new boss over his slower, more cautious approach to self-driving cars. Waymo CEO John Krafcik said that Levandowski had vehemently held that redundant systems for steering and braking were unnecessary. “I think it’s fair to say we had different points of view on safety,” said Krafcik in court.

New York Magazine once attributed Levandowski as saying, “I’m pissed we didn’t have the first death,” to a group of Uber engineers after a driver died in a Tesla on autopilot in 2016. (Levandowski has denied ever saying it).

“The team is not moving fast enough due to a combination of risk aversion and lack of urgency, we need to move faster,” Levandowski told Page in another communication that was shown during the Waymo trial.

His messages to Travis Kalanick were more casual. “We need to think through the strategy, to take all the shortcuts we can find,” he said in one text message. And in another, “I just see this as a race and we need to win, second place is first looser [sic].”

Kalanick was similarly breezy. “Burn the village,” he texted Levandowski at one point.

“Yup,” Levandowski replied, within seconds.

In court, Kalanick said he did not remember what that exchange referred to. Whatever these communications were — jokes, off-color remarks, effusive babble — they don’t look good in the context of Levandowski’s views on safety and even worse after Tempe, Arizona.

A spokesperson for Uber distanced the current company from Levandowski, pointing to the changes in both leadership and personnel. “We believe that technology has the power to make transportation safer than ever before and recognize our deep responsibility to keep people safe,” he said in an email. “Uber’s new leadership has made it clear to the entire company that safety has to be at the core of what we do. That’s how we operate at Uber today.”

Update, March 20th 2018 3:31PM: The article has been updated to add comment from Uber.