Uber Determines Pittsburgh Lives Most Expendable; Plans To Unleash Autonomous Vehicles There Within Weeks

Uber just announced plans to introduce autonomous, well semi-autonomous anyway, vehicles to carry passengers in Pittsburgh later this month. Per an interview with Bloomberg, in a plan described as “audacious, even reckless,”Uber CEO Travis Kalanick says autonomous cars are “going commercial” because they “cant’ just be about science.”
Even though the long-term plan is to have completely autonomous vehicles, for now cars in Pittsburgh will have engineers in the driver seat ready to take over at any moment while simultaneously monitoring for “bugs” in the system. As one Uber engineer pointed out, there’s a need to keep human drivers in the cars for now as his “autonomous” vehicle suddenly went “un-autonomous” earlier this week while crossing the Allegheny River…but, as he points out, “bridges are really hard.” Who cares about bridges? If your car happens to go tumbling off the edge there’s usually water below to soften your fall.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Aug 18, 2016.