# For some safety experts, Uber’s self-driving taxi test isn’t something to hail



## Michael - Cleveland (Jan 1, 2015)

The Washington Post 9/12/16
https://www.washingtonpost.com/busi...5f980a-769a-11e6-be4f-3f42f2e5a49e_story.html
*For some safety experts, Uber's self-driving taxi test isn't something to hail*









Uber's unprecedented autonomous-car experiment will launch this week in Pittsburgh, even though Pennsylvania has yet to pass basic laws that permit the testing of self-driving cars. (Jared Wickerham/AP)​
By Elizabeth Dwoskin and Brian Fung September 11 at 6:45 PM

SAN FRANCISCO - Uber's decision to bring self-driving taxis to the streets of Pittsburgh this week is raising alarms among a swath of safety experts who say that the technology is not nearly ready for prime time.

_"Current law, in its silence, is permitting it by not prohibiting it."_​The unprecedented experiment will launch even though Pennsylvania has yet to pass basic laws that permit the testing of self-driving cars or rules that would govern what would happen in a crash. Uber is also not required to pass along any data from its vehicles to regulators.

Meanwhile, researchers note, autonomous cars have been thrown off by bridges, a particular problem in Pittsburgh, which has more bridges than any other major U.S. city.

"They are essentially making the commuters the guinea pigs," said Joan Claybrook, a consumer-protection advocate and former head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. "Of course there are going to be crashes. You can do the exact same tests without having average citizens in your car."

But advocates of autonomous vehicles say that the technology might never have happened if companies had to wait for governments to pass rules first. With nearly 37,000 Americans dying in car crashes every year, largely because of driver errors, technologists have stressed the critical need to push forward on testing driverless cars on public roads.

In many ways, these competing views, brought into stark relief by Uber's Pittsburgh project, reflect the wider tension over how innovation in America should take place.

Pittsburgh might be the exact environment that innovators love to leap into - a legal void that can be defined by technologists, not bureaucrats. The question is how fast, and under what conditions, should the testing of a life-changing technology occur. While many companies, including Google and General Motors, are conducting trials of automatic vehicles on public roads, Uber is the first to bring everyday commuters along for the ride.

"We've seen that this is coming - faster than anyone had imagined, " said Roger Cohen, policy director for Pennsylvania's Department of Transportation, who said that Uber was not legally required to ask for regulators' permission before its launch. "Current law, in its silence, is permitting it by not prohibiting it."

Uber's Pittsburgh project isn't only the most high-stakes test of a promising, nascent technology. It is also a test of a belief that runs deep in the Silicon Valley DNA. That ethos holds as an article of faith that innovation will always be far ahead of the rules. It sees the world as a laboratory in which life can be made better when innovators are afforded the freedom to experiment.

In a talk two years ago at a Washington Post forum, Chris Urmson, the former Google executive who once led the company's self-driving car project, said "one of the great things about American innovation" was that if the law "doesn't say you can't do it, then you can."

Justin Kan, a partner at the Silicon Valley start-up incubator and seed fund Y Combinator, said that for all its fights with regulators, including scathing battles with taxi commissions in cities across the world, Uber has helped to pioneer a model where companies can go into an arena where the law was quiet.

To be sure, the Pittsburgh project does not reflect the hard-charging Uber of its early days - back then, the start-up stormed into cities and lacerated taxi commissions for bilking consumers and preventing private citizens from making money by picking up passengers in their own cars. Though Uber was not legally required to do so, the company worked closely with Pennsylvania regulators in the rollout of the project. That strategy allowed the ride-hailing giant to get buy-in from officials, Cohen said, and exploit existing loopholes with fewer obstacles.

Uber declined an interview request but provided general information. The company said it vehicles will include two trained safety drivers who can take over the wheel in an emergency.

[ _read the full article here_... ]


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## Gung-Ho (Jun 2, 2015)

Why two drivers. These things are supposed to eliminate the driver not double the number.


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## andaas (May 19, 2015)

Gung-Ho said:


> Why two drivers. These things are supposed to eliminate the driver not double the number.


One is a driver. One is monitoring the tech.


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## CrazyTaxi (Aug 22, 2016)

I would much rather approach the 37,000 deaths per year with safer cars, not self driving cars that have no common sense or consciousness.


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## uberdriverfornow (Jan 10, 2016)

Gung-Ho said:


> Why two drivers. These things are supposed to eliminate the driver not double the number.


lol Leave it up to Uber to find more creative ways to throw money down the drain with even more costs. Now they gotta pay for the driver, the technician, the technology, and the car.

They have a great concept and the only thing they know is how to completely and totally screw it up. Any idiot could be making a killing with the concept Uber and Lyft have. But instead of making billions keeping it simple, they want to lose billions.


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## TwoFiddyMile (Mar 13, 2015)

andaas said:


> One is a driver. One is monitoring the tech.


So they DOUBLED the employees.
Uber on!


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## andaas (May 19, 2015)

TwoFiddyMile said:


> So they DOUBLED the employees.
> Uber on!


Gotta spend money to lose money!


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## renbutler (Jul 25, 2015)

CrazyTaxi said:


> I would much rather approach the 37,000 deaths per year with safer cars, not self driving cars that have no common sense or consciousness.


Except that a lot of people out there have zero common sense or consciousness...


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## Michael - Cleveland (Jan 1, 2015)

CrazyTaxi said:


> I would much rather approach the 37,000 deaths per year with safer cars, not self driving cars that have no common sense or consciousness.


I would agree - but only if we could remove from the road all drivers who have "no common sense or consciousness".


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## Michael - Cleveland (Jan 1, 2015)

TwoFiddyMile said:


> So they DOUBLED the employees.
> Uber on!


You want to rethink that posting about a dozen cars in a test?
(the cars are company owned, and the employees are, employees - they're paid whether they're sitting in the car or in the lab.) As if a few test cars and employees are of any consequence to Uber's overall expenses? Ha!


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## TwoFiddyMile (Mar 13, 2015)

Michael - Cleveland said:


> You want to rethink that posting about a dozen cars in a test?


I could reword it.
All reports I have read state "autonomous cars have both an engineer and a fake driver in the front".
So...
"They DOUBLED the employees in each vehicle for this 12 vehicle experiment!".
Ok Doc?


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## Michael - Cleveland (Jan 1, 2015)

TwoFiddyMile said:


> I could reword it.
> All reports I have read state "autonomous cars have both an engineer and a fake driver in the front".
> So...
> "They DOUBLED the employees in each vehicle for this 12 vehicle experiment!".
> Ok Doc?


hehe... sure - but what's the 'outrage' for... I don't understand why it's even worth noting. All they did was move some cars from the lab to the streets. I mean, it's not like they 'rolled out' autonomous cars in a city.


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## TwoFiddyMile (Mar 13, 2015)

Michael - Cleveland said:


> hehe... sure - but what's the 'outrage' for... I don't understand why it's even worth noting. All they did was move some cars from the lab to the streets. I mean, it's not like they 'rolled out' autonomous cars in a city.


The media is hailing these experiments as " the final days of human drivers".


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## uberdriverfornow (Jan 10, 2016)

Michael - Cleveland said:


> hehe... sure - but what's the 'outrage' for... I don't understand why it's even worth noting. All they did was move some cars from the lab to the streets. I mean, it's not like they 'rolled out' autonomous cars in a city.


Come on, obviously he's talking about instead of having one driver in the vehicle you have two drivers, whether or not you want to call the "technician" in the vehicle or not, he's still indirectly driving by way of the technology of the "self-driving" portion that he is guiding.


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## TwoFiddyMile (Mar 13, 2015)

It's all smoke and mirrors.


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## Michael - Cleveland (Jan 1, 2015)

TwoFiddyMile said:


> It's all smoke and mirrors.


It's a test program - call it smoke and mirrors - as you do - or a dog & pony show for legislators, investors and the media - as I do... it's insignificant in the real world of here and now. They could have a car-load of drivers and technicians in the car and drones overhead taking video - ot wouldn't change the fact that it's a test - and not 'real' in terms of providing transportation.



TwoFiddyMile said:


> The media is hailing these experiments as " the final days of human drivers".


As evidenced by the original post in this thread, 'the media' is hardly monolithic and does not all share one opinion.


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## uberdriverfornow (Jan 10, 2016)

Michael - Cleveland said:


> It's a test program - call it smoke and mirrors -


He may have been simply talking about your post.


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## Fireguy50 (Nov 23, 2015)

Waste of business capital.


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## rembrandt (Jul 3, 2016)




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## SoThisIsRetirement (Feb 16, 2016)

TwoFiddyMile said:


> It's all smoke and mirrors.


That smoke you're referring to is probably coming from your floor-mounted 8-track player...


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## TwoFiddyMile (Mar 13, 2015)

SoThisIsRetirement said:


> That smoke you're referring to is probably coming from your floor-mounted 8-track player...


God I wish.
GTO, positraction, Hearst shifter, dual quad carbs, glass pack, CB radio, two tone mullet?

I'm afraid you have the wrong guy.


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## NachonCheeze (Sep 8, 2015)

TwoFiddyMile said:


> The media is hailing these experiments as " the final days of human drivers".


Agreed.....As the media is a bunch of moronic parrots that simply repeat whatever they are told....what they say means squat. Kalnickacrap can state that he's making a star trek transporter and the media will report it like its a sure thing just cause crapanick said it.....somebody put me out of my misery PPPPPLLLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAASSSSEEEEE


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