Uber's Self-Driving Cars Are Now Picking Up Passengers in Arizona (theverge.com)

Almost two months to the day after Uber loaded its fleet of self-driving SUVs into the trailer of a self-driving truck and stormed off to Arizona in a self-driving huff, the company is preparing to launch its second experiment (if you don't count the aborted San Francisco pilot) in autonomous ride-hailing. From a report on The Verge: What's different is that this time, Uber has the blessing from Arizona's top politician, Governor Doug Ducey, a Republican, who is expected to be "Rider Zero" on an autonomous trip along with Anthony Levandowski, VP of Uber's Advanced Technologies Group. [...] Starting today, residents of Tempe, Arizona, can hail a self-driving Volvo XC90 SUV on Uber's ride-sharing platform. All trips will include two Uber engineers in the front seats as safety drivers, in the event a human needs to take over control from the vehicle's software. Uber says it hopes to expand the coverage area to other cities in Arizona in the coming weeks.

Comments

Will people like self driving cars?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Basically no one obeys speed limits. The posted speed limits are at best suggestions, and at worst revenue generators for the local governments. And many other traffic rules are casually disobeyed. Except for the stop sign, I don't see much voluntary compliance of traffic law. Stop after the white line at the signals, making a rolling right turn through the red light, 5 or 10 mph over speed limit within the city, 10 to 15 mph over the limit on highways are rampant.

Now throw into this mixture a fleet of cars, strictly obeying speed limits, preferring to slow down rather than speed up on yellow, refuse to use free right turns, coming to full stops on grade crossings... A few Access vans, school buses and trucks doing this itself annoys people stuck behind them in traffic. Now suddenly a large fleet of vehicles with a spinning dome on the head ....

Also, in the game of chicken, the winning strategy is to appear be irrational. Break your steering wheel and throw it away in full view of the competitor, "I can't swerve, even if I want to, your move buddy!". All these cars are known to rational decision makers. They will be gamed like nobody's business. People will dangerously cut infront of them, be very rude to them, after all they are machines, no hard feeling. And every time the self driving car will slow down, yield, and let the barbarians get away with it.

In isolated test cases, in small numbers they will work. But large number of them interacting with large number of normal people, they will be forever stuck on the highway ramp or left turn yield on green locations.