Why Uber chose this town to test its self-driving car fleet
When faced with the choice of where to test its first fleet of self-driving cars, Uber went with the obvious choice — Pittsburgh?
Not San Francisco or San Jose. Not Austin, TX or Brooklyn, NY. Nope, they went with Pittsburgh, and this article listed below from the New York Times reveals how and why this Disruptive Technology is hitting the Three Rivers area first.
Of course, we at Tematica, being Washington Capitals fans, are somewhat hoping for a mishap or sorts with the Penguins — we don’t want one of these cars to kill anyone in particular (Sidney Crosby), just maybe ding them up for a few games (Malkin), preferably around the time of the playoffs. Not sayin’, just sayin’ 🙂
There have been no public service announcements or demonstrations of the technology. Except for the mayor and one police official, no other top city leader has seen a self-driving Uber vehicle operate up close. Fire and emergency services don’t know where the Uber cars will travel.
It is precisely this hands-off approach that has made Pittsburgh ideal grounds for one of Silicon Valley’s boldest experiments — and it has ignited criticism that the city is giving away its keys to Uber, which is testing a nascent technology and has a reputation for running roughshod over regulators and municipalities.
Source: No Driver? Bring It On. How Pittsburgh Became Uber’s Testing Ground – The New York Times
