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posted by martyb on Sunday July 23 2017, @12:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the trial-by-fire dept.

Lyft will begin offering "autonomous" rides (with a test driver in the front seat) to some ride-hailing customers by the end of the year. The program is expected to launch in Boston first:

Silicon Valley's steady march toward self-driving cars took another step forward Friday as the ride-hailing company Lyft said its customers will be able to summon a driverless vehicle on some roads by the end of the year.

The autonomy program, which is expected to launch in Boston before eventually spreading to other cities, could ultimately involve hundreds of thousands of vehicles, said company officials. Depending on the precise conditions of a trip — including the route, traffic, weather and time of day — riders who opt into the trial may be automatically picked up in a self-driving car built by one of a number of manufacturers working with Lyft, rather than a human driver. "You're going to see it. You're going to see these vehicles on the street," said Taggart Matthiesen, Lyft's senior director of product.

As with other companies that have been publicly testing self-driving cars, Lyft riders who participate in the program will be accompanied by test drivers sitting in the front seats of the vehicles.

Lyft announcement. Also at TechCrunch, Reuters, and Bloomberg.

[Ed. addition: I can personally vouch for all 14 of the suggestions given in Boston Driving Tips. If you are intending to drive in Boston, don't trust your past experience — this short article should be mandatory reading.]


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 23 2017, @09:38PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 23 2017, @09:38PM (#543487)

    I misread "autonomous" as "anonymous" It's the opposite of anonymous.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Sunday July 23 2017, @10:44PM (1 child)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday July 23 2017, @10:44PM (#543507) Journal

    If it centralizes car ownership, it could become the end of anonymous travel for many people. Those with autonomous cars that they bought themselves will be trackable, and today's cars probably have some spy electronics in them as well.

    Add a kill switch so that police can stop your car remotely.

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    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday July 24 2017, @06:12PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Monday July 24 2017, @06:12PM (#543800)

    It can be:
    1) steal someone else's phone
    2) call autonomous car for a ride
    3) send it to discrete area. load it quickly into faraday-cage truck.
    4) dismantle at your leisure
    5) profit !

    What do you mean by "it's more complicated than stealing a normal car"? Killjoys...

    By the way, how will people tell their autonomous car to stop right here instead of there, or change roads, turn around or other oops moments, when it's not able to listen?