Self-driving vehicles are already putting miles on their tires in Pittsburgh, and in the next few years, Chicago also could see such cars cruising the city’s streets.
Recently, Uber launched a pilot of self-driving vehicles in Pittsburgh—a project the rideshare company has worked on since the launch of its Advanced Technologies Center in early 2015.
“At the ATC we’re working on the future of self–driving technology, which will mean far fewer accidents, less congestion, and radical improvements to the economics of transportation over time,” Uber said in a statement.
The self-driving Ubers are available to a select group of riders, who can opt into a trip if paired with an autonomous vehicle, Uber spokeswoman Molly Spaeth said. Customers still have the option of requesting a human driver.
“The cars can only go in certain areas of the city,” she said. “The self-driving technology relies on really detailed maps to work, so the vehicles can only operate in areas that are highly mapped.”
The robotic Ubers have two employees riding in the front seat for each trip: a safety driver, who can take control of the vehicle if needed, and a technical operator, who monitors the self-driving technology. A tablet in the backseat displays information about the ride for its passengers.
“We believe that real-world testing is critical to making self-driving cars a reality,” Uber’s statement said. “And Pittsburgh’s narrow, winding streets and unpredictable weather make it the ideal place to test this new technology.”
What about Chicago? While Spaeth said the goal is to roll out the pilot in additional cities, for the time being the company’s focus is on Pittsburgh.
Meanwhile, Chicago Aldermen Edward Burke (14th) and Anthony Beale (9th) would prefer driverless cars remain elsewhere. They proposed an ordinance at a City Council meeting last month that would ban such cars in Chicago.
“We do not want the streets of Chicago to be used as an experiment that will no doubt come with its share of risks, especially for pedestrians,” Burke said in an emailed statement from the city’s committee on finance. “No technology is one-hundred percent safe.”
The ordinance states that “no person should operate autonomous vehicles upon any roadway” and defines autonomous technology as “technology that has the capability to drive a vehicle without the active physical control or monitoring by a human operator.” Violators of the ordinance would be fined $500.
A joint committee of Finance and Transportation will consider the measure, but no hearing has been scheduled yet.
Self-driving technology does have proponents in Chicago. Hani Mahmassani, director of the Northwestern University Transportation Center and a professor of civil and environmental engineering, said autonomous vehicles would make roadways safer.
“If you look at the cause of crashes, more than 94 percent of the time the cause is human error, whether it’s not seeing something, being distracted, having delayed reaction times or driving under the influence,” he said. “Autonomous vehicles reduce that dramatically.”
At the rate developments in self-driving technology and vehicles are going, Mahmassani believes driverless cars will be on the market within five years. Along with safety benefits, he said they could also increase mobility, whether it be for elderly people who can no longer drive or for people in areas of the city that are not well served by public transportation.
“Chicago has always been a transportation hub, and transit has always been an important element of our economy,” Mahmassani said. “We could be a leader in the logistic operations of autonomous vehicles. It’s an important opportunity that we should be nurturing and not putting roadblocks on.
“We want to be a leader and not a laggard, and ultimately, it is a race. If you don’t prepare, you will be obsolete when the next wave of technology hits. We should be asking ourselves, ‘How should we reconfigure transit and infrastructure to accommodate this?’ “
Personally, the thought of driverless cars speeding down Chicago streets and highways scares the crap out of me, but I think that’s just because it’s something I’ve never experienced. Working the bugs out will take time, but chances are they will get worked out, and I could definitely see self-driving cars being the next big thing.
@RianneCoale | rcoale@redeyechicago.com
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