Lyft to Develop Self-Driving Car Technology in New Silicon Valley Facility

They've been promising us self-driving cars since I went to the 1964 NY World's Fair. If they don't hurry up, the only self-drive I'll be making is to the cemetery.

So what happens when a driver-less car causes a fatality? When you get into a car now, you assume responsibility for your actions. When a driver-less car has an accident who is responsible? The people in the car? The company operating the car? The programmer who decided what actions the car will take in a crash situation?

If I was a programmer for one of these companies, I would have an iron-clad hold harmless, protect & defend, clause in my contract. It is not a matter of If a driver-less car is going to be in a fatality, it is a matter of when. When that happens, all hell will break loose. These programmers are not working on a 'cool project,' they are working on a project that could jeopardize their future earnings and freedom. Geek, let me introduce you to a nasty portion of the real world.

"Lyft to Develop Self-Driving Car Technology in New Silicon Valley Facility"
This article was a real good read for me, especially as they find it to improve business and not have the need for drivers or non-AI. I was interested in this article, because I feel that self driving cars would become a huge problem, as if anyone has watched the movie "Logan", there are futuristic self driving transport trucks, but they only follow the speed limit and only slow down when they sense anything nearby. They have no insight of what might happen, in which humans do. Bringing self driving cars into a business aspect is a huge gamble, as Lyft could be wasting resources and money, as well as customers, as new self driving cars are not reliable, and if they are going to make such a bold decision on these types of cars, they better be hiring the best of the best, because if I am ever to use a self driving car made by Lyft, I want to ensure that I am safe as can be and it does NOT use some pin-point, quickest route kind of GPS system. Hopefully Lyft will make these, but I really want to feel safe overall if I ever use Lyft's services.

Makes no sense. Lyft and Uber are wasting their resources with self-driving car development. Given the number of companies involved in trying to create self-driving cars, pretty much everyone believes they will happen within the next 10 years or so. Then they're just another commodity like today's cars. I know not everyone would agree that cars are a commodity, but the market for cars has many players who struggle to differentiate themselves relying mostly on "brand image", expensive advertising and minor differences in the actual cars. To me that's a commodity.

So what benefit does Lyft or Uber get from spending their money on the development of these vehicles? Quicker time to market? No. A better car than their competitor? No. Good press? Hardly. They should stick to the parts of their "platform" where they can innovate, keep it proprietary and make a difference against their competitor. That is their app and the backend systems that support the app.

Computers are far too often little more than solutions looking for problems. And the rate at which software evolves soon surpasses the frequency with which people buy new cars. Buy a car with the latest fad in software today; two years from now it will be out of date and obsolete. This does nothing for consumers at all, and it certainly doesn't bode well for autonomous vehicles.

Beyond that, self-driving cars are an utterly foolish idea. It seems that corporations and venture capitalists have so much money that they don't know what to do with it, so they spend it on projects like this. Far better to tax that money and use it for society's benefit.

I enjoy driving. Driving well is a pleasurable challenge. Unfortunately a lot of people are unaware of the dynamic they enter, and the responsibilities they bear, when piloting large pieces of metal on public roads. And/or simply don't have the skills to drive well. Now add in the distraction of cell phones and driverless vehicles become inevitable, if only from a public health perspective.

Oh well. One more old time experience just starting to fade away.

Good luck trying to get cities like Chicago to allow self driving cars. Many rideshare drivers in cities like Chicago depend on this gig service as a primary source of income.

This service has relieved SOME of the pressures of unemployment/low-employment in urban areas. Let's see what happens when a city council brings it up for a vote.....

I can't believe the complete trust that people in these comments are declaring in this concept! It hasn't even been vetted and tested much yet and there are already problems. Why would you trust your life to a machine? Machines fail every day. Think about how often your computer freezes or your cable goes out or your stream has to "buffer." Now think about that type of thing happening at 80mph on the highway. The problem with humans is that they just want instant gratification and not to worry about the details.

There are so many bad drivers on the road now that I can't wait till computers take over. I suspect that even if the robots rebel there will be a smaller death toll.

Besides there's so much empty office space , With them tearing down recently built buildings (Like less than 15 years old), and especially Palo Alto… It should be cheap to occupy a building… Maybe not.

Gotta love it. Everyone doing research and development. Only problem is, chances are, it's with taxpayer funding, the way it always is, so we, the taxpayer, pay for it, then, the companies own it. Tell me again, why we, as a society continue to put up with this major ripoff?

There will never be driverless cars zooming around our highways and back roads. Is it a driverless car when the backup for a technology failure is, a human driver? Who will pay for the technology infrastructure, such as road sensors and radar? Besides, will Americans ever accept unmanned 80000 lb 16 wheeled tractor-trailers barreling around the roads. While I think there may be many technologies that spin off from the current research, I don't see driverless cars in our future.

I've often wanted to find LYFT out here in the bay area; now I guess they'll be around our town, huh? It should be a good thing.

I think driverless cars are awesome. I am 100 percent for it. I can't wait until they become mainstream. That day will come eventually. I can't say when. We will all benefit.

Too much technology in a car is a waste. I'm all for lower emissions and better mileage but the car industry has gone overboard. Software in cars is an unnecessary complication and expensive to maintain. An average sedan could hit 50 mpg today if not for the unwanted extras thrown into the vehicle. Features are nice but I don't need an Apollo moon lander in my vehicle. Most people just want the thing to run. Debugging a poorly programmed oxygen sensor is not high on my list of things to do.

Trust me; car manufacturers are not software developers either. I've seen ATMs with better operating systems than the current on-board computer systems. Oh and when was the last time the developer patched the OS? Think about that the next time you hitch an unsecured smart phone to a vehicle's blue tooth. Imagine carjacking in the age of self-driving cars.

Besides, driving is fun. It's hard to find an decently priced manual transmission in the United States anymore. You're either in low-budget territory or somewhere in outer space. Semi-automatics don't count. They only encourage people to drive more dangerously while paying less attention. Manuals are good because driving is a useful skill. Technology in cars makes a mass transportation hybrid that's inefficient and generally stupefying. Try asking anyone born after the smart phone how to read an atlas.

I hate the whole idea of a car without a driver. Your driver could wind up being Putin. Nowadays you never know.

The profit-based concept of "self-driving cars" under real-world driving conditions is absurd. While they may appear technically feasible under controlled conditions, in the real world computers crash and can also be hacked. Human drivers continuously interpret subtle behavioral cues of other drivers in order to avoid accidents. They also observe and avoid road hazards that could damage a vehicle or lead to an accident. These types of protective human behaviors will be impossible to successfully program into computers. And having a computer drive a car under difficult and ever-changing road conditions (e.g. in the dark with rain, snow, ice, wind, etc), particularly when approaching other vehicles at high speed only a few feet apart, presents unsolvable problems. Humans will not want to give control over who will die to software companies. Resources would be more efficiently applied to safety through better driver training and fixing our roads, and getting the unnecessary technology that is already killing people out of our cars.

Somehow I can not see myself getting into a driver less mystery car (even if white and not black). This would be particularly true on a dark and stormy night.

There is this assumption that a world of self-driving cars is desirable and inevitable, simply because it's possible. But the system would put millions of people out of work and make us depend even more on opaque systems of surveillance and control. Driving a car gives you some understanding of technology, physics, and your surroundings; it is a way of connecting to the world. When you ride in a cab driven by a human being, you are given an opportunity to meet someone unlike yourself and exchange stories. Instead, we are supposed to sit obliviously inside rolling robots while we caress our smartphones. No, thanks!

can't wait when a few individuals from lyft and Uber will be able to accumulate huge wealth with self driving cars when millions of humans will be left without a source of revenue. With that logic in mind , I hope those companies will have enough customers after apps and robots make work obsolete

Can't wait for self driving cars, especially as I get older.

Automation will wipe out many millions of jobs. What will replace them? If we are lucky, then science, arts, and service.

For a hundred years or so we've been sold on "motoring freedom", and our entire infrastructure is built around that. I love driving my car. I don't know anyone who wants a self-driving car. The "race" for self-driving cars doesn't seem to be coming from drivers, and that most definitely includes taxi drivers.

You call Lyft and Uber "ride-hailing" companies, parroting their self-characterizations. But they're simply taxis, albeit with an internet, rather than telephone, connection for "hailing."