Self driving Uber cars coming to Pittsburgh this month

You read it right. Autonomous cars are moving to Pittsburgh. According to Bloomberg, Uber co-founder and CEO Travis Kalanick decided two years ago that he wanted to partner up with Carnegie Mellon’s robotic department to create self-driving Uber cars, as CMU is the hub of such automobile technology.

For the time being, humans will be in the driver’s seat for supervision, but Kalanick hopes that the cars will be trusted to drive themselves completely in the near future. The cars will be able to self-navigate using detailed maps that outline everything in their path from traffic lines to parked cars to trees.

In light of this new system, we spoke to Pitt students to get their take on this new system.

Marisa, Junior, Political Science and Communications

“I think it’s awesome to be living in a city that’s the first to experience something that could be a part of our future. To be honest it does make me a little nervous but I still think it’s cool. Yes, it does make me feel bad for the drivers out of work but I don’t think there’s much we can do about technology replacing human work. I’m not really too excited because I don’t think I’ll want to use the self driving Ubers but the nerd inside me is definitely still geeking out.”

Wesley, Junior, Nonfiction Writing

“I think it’s really awesome. You know, you hear all these things about Pittsburgh being such a tech city and its actually nice to see it coming to life before your eyes. It really goes to show that Pittsburgh has transformed far beyond the days of being just the “steel city” and is making a name for its self in the tech industry. Pittsburgh was on the cutting edge of industry before and it’s nice to see it happening once again.”

Sara, Junior, Bioinformatics 

“I’d say self-driving cars are a poor and confusing idea in general, especially with GPS technology often failing to update in real-time with respect to detours, road construction, traffic warnings, etc. It also puts people out of jobs, as though the concept of a non-union gig economy wasn’t bad enough.”

Connor, Sophomore, Philosophy/ Political Science/ Economics

“I’ve heard about this, and personally, I would prefer that commercial car companies offer autonomous cars for consumers to buy before Uber begins to utilize them. However, I do feel safe with humans supervising. I’m honestly excited that Pittsburgh is the first city to utilize the autonomous system. The city isn’t as congested as others, although it will still challenge the autonomous cars to make real-city decisions.”

Lester, Junior, Biology

“I think it’s pretty cool, but it could affect some safety in the city. Plus, I think it’s kinda weird that technology is taking over in place of people. It’s the movement in the world I think but very strange none the less.”

Natalie, Junior

“I’m almost kind of proud that Pittsburgh was chosen because it feels like an honor of some sort, but I don’t really like the idea of a self driving car. It makes me nervous because it seems like an accident waiting to happen.”

Melanie, Junior, Marketing

“I saw this on the news the other night! Personally, I love it and am so glad that Pittsburgh can be seen as a hut for technology world wide with a company like Uber to finally help it get the crisp image that it has deserved for awhile.”

Brandon, Senior, Chemical Engineering

“[An autonomous car] seems idealistic. I did not expect for something like this to happen now, and I would have thought that the launch for a nascent technology like this would have taken place in Silicon Valley, not Pittsburgh. Since it’s my hometown, I am particularly intrigued and I want to get more information on the whole development.”

Personally, I am pretty skeptic, as I don’t foresee how autonomous cars will help prevent crashes or improve route efficiency, especially if a vast majority of the other vehicles on the road are human operated. I think that self-driving cars would work if every vehicle were autonomous, but with humans there is always a level of unpredictability that even a self-driving cars with sensors and cameras would not be able to account for. The article that I read (Bloomberg) said that Uber hasn’t seen any crashes since they started road testing in May, but obviously it is yet to be determined whether that will persist or not. Regardless, I am very intrigued by this development and curious as to what the future holds.”

Nick, an Uber driver in Pittsburgh as well as a emergency medicine major at Pitt, gave us his take as a driver for the company.

“I think it’s great. Yeah it might take jobs away from some of us but Uber shouldn’t be a full time job.”

Unfortunately for some people, it is their full time job. It appears as though Pittsburgh is not too eager to have autonomous Uber cars. They seem great in theory, but we will see how this whole experiment follows through and hope no one gets injured from any technical difficulties.