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General Motors Co. and the SoftBank Vision Fund are partnering to invest in GM Cruise to bring self-driving vehicles to market by next year, the company said May 31.

Since the Uber accident in March, autonomous car researchers’ eyes have been opening to the need to teach robots how to drive in the dark and avoid people who wander into the road.

Uber Technologies Inc.’s self-driving vehicle wasn’t programmed to stop for obstructions in its path, including the pedestrian it struck and killed last March in Arizona, according to federal investigators.

Uber is shutting down testing operations in Arizona and focusing instead on testing in Pittsburgh and San Francisco, according to an internal e-mail from Eric Meyhofer, a Carnegie Mellon University graduate and the head of Uber’s self-driving car operations.

Consumer trust in self-driving cars has plummeted after high-profile roadway fatalities, with almost three-quarters of Americans now saying they are too afraid to ride in an autonomous vehicle, according to a new survey.

Just last year, Apple was in the backseat of an increasingly crowded competition for self-driving cars with Google-owned Waymo, Tesla and Uber vying for an edge.

Cars that drive themselves are finding the clearest paths to showrooms in the United Kingdom, Germany, South Korea and Singapore, where governments have enacted legislation allowing autonomous vehicles to be tested on public roads. And China’s not far behind.

The self-driving car wave could be headed to Rhode Island. The state’s Department of Transportation has released a request for proposals in its bid for a public-private partnership to test autonomous vehicles, likely in the form of small driverless shuttles in the Providence area.

Uber believes its self-driving software that chooses how to react when it detects objects in the roadway is the cause behind a fatal collision between one of its vehicles and a pedestrian.

FRISCO, Texas — The nation’s first self-driving car service for the public will begin here in July.