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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.]
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Monday July 24 2017, @02:38PM
> Autonomous vehicles will become safer than human-driven vehicles, if they aren't already. I hope you can enjoy your team without getting creamed.
Don't worry, I will. Even if autonomous cars are proven safer than humans (which I find highly unlikely will ever happen) I would still want to be in control.
I never found driving particularly hard (in fact I find it really enjoyable), and have never had an accident, even a minor one. However, I don't begrudge others, everyone has different priorities and are willing to take other risks (or not). Seeing people using the phone, reading (wtf?), putting on their make up or otherwise not paying attention to driving shows me that there are people for whom driving is not a pleasure, but a chore to devote as little time and effort to as possible.
They will never put the required concentration into piloting what is essentially 2 tons of fast moving metal, and for them I believe autonomous cars would be exactly what they would want.