After a successful trial run in Pittsburgh, Uber is doing second round of trials in San Francisco as part of the ride-sharing company's pilot project with autonomous vehicles. However, cyclists and pedestrians will need to be on guard for uber's self-driving cars.
According to the Guardian, Uber admits that there is a flaw in the way the self-driving cars cross over bike lanes, but engineers are looking to fix the problem soon. A video of one of Uber's self-driving cars beating the red light was also caught on video and was uploaded on YouTube, raising road safety concerns.
Additionally, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition also released a warning for San Francisco cyclists about Uber's self-driving cars after first-hand experiences showed that cars crossed over bike paths during turns, posing a direct threat to cyclists as per Techcrunch. San Francisco has an estimated 82,000 bike trips daily on over 200 miles of cycling lanes.
Uber's self-driving cars have reportedly been turning into bike lanes . https://t.co/SUsHZ9ZXge pic.twitter.com/EXvb9AVT3x
— Complex (@Complex) December 21, 2016
Uber's self-driving car trial on San Francisco street was met with opposition, with local authorities declaring that Uber needs an autonomous vehicles license to operate their self-driving cars. However,Uber stand by its claim that their self-driving cars do not meet the definition of autonomous vehicles and will continue with the trials despite legal threats against them by the California DMV.
Similar to their trials in Pittsburgh, Uber's trial self-driving cars -- which are Volvo XC90s -- will have a safety driver behind the wheel for manual driving when needed, and an Uber test engineer to monitor the test, reports TechCrunch. The self-driving test cars will still be picking up real passengers during the test run, so Uber-passengers will be able to get a chance to ride the autonomous vehicles on the streets of San Francisco.
In Pittsburgh, the trial run was openly welcomed as the state is home to Carnegie Mellon University and leading autonomous vehicle research -- Uber employed researchers from Carnegie Mellon University's robotics center to develop Uber's autonomous vehicle technology over a year ago. Under Pennsylvania state law, automated vehicles are allowed on the streets as long as there is a licensed driver behind the wheel.
