Coming to a city near you soon…

“This is a tragedy [traffic deaths] that self-driving technology can help solve.” -Uber. Uber has recently announced that they will have self-driving cars around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They have released 100 cars in the city ready to service all people. It will be a safer way of going places in the country. The cars won’t be able to maneuver around urban areas, but will be able to get you where you need to go safe and sound. Uber won’t have you alone in your ride. The company will have two trained safety drivers along in each ride to make sure everything will run smoothly.

Even though Uber is doing a great job with this technological advancement, this will also come with some flaws. With self-driving cars, Uber will show the mistakes that technology has yet to accomplish. This research comes from a law professor at The University of South Carolina who reasearches self-driving cars. He also states that the cars will engender trust from the passanger. “…people think these are terrifying until they get into a vehicle…then, a mile later, they have total and complete confidence in these systems.” -Bryant Walker Smith. For everything to be safe testing, the vehicles will need 100 miles of testing done, and they have chosen Pittsburgh to help with the testing. While having passengers in the car, and something fatal or serious happens, the company should have a plan for addressing why they didn’t have a safe route for the person or people.

The testing for the self-driving were supposed to happen in November of this year, but the company called the mayor of Pittsburgh to let him know that the car advancements were moving faster than they expected to. When they brought the car, they let the mayor ride home in the self-driving car. “It was a steady ride home. There was no time I was fearful or worried.” -Mayor William Peduto. While the mayor thinks this is a great plan, other are thinking otherwise. A columnist for Pittsburgh wrote that they should put the “brakes” on this project. He also stated that it is the Pittsburgh area drivers who fail to merge, yield, and stop properly.

“Yes, now we’ve got a new West Coast thing too… San Francisco as well as Palo Alto.” -Travis Kalanick, Uber CEO

But why Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania? Uber has made a statement saying that they chose Pittsburgh because of the mountains, steep hills, sharp turns, and more. It’s a great city to start out this kind of craze since it will get the cars software prepared for anything that can come in their way.

With all of the new self-driving cars, people will be losing 4.1 million jobs. The average money a person can make from $40,000 which will be the amount that they are losing from the self-driving cars. Some will be continuing in the Uber industry with assisting the self-driving cars. Uber says that it will be a while until there will be more self-driving cars everywhere.