Driverless: Intelligent Cars and the Road Ahead
by Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman.
MIT Press, 312 pp., $29.95
This September, Uber, the appsummoned taxi service, launched a fleet of driverless Volvos and Fords in the city of Pittsburgh. While Google has had its own autonomous vehicles on the roads of Mountain View, California, Austin, Texas, Kirkland, Washington, and Phoenix, Arizona, for a few years, gathering data and refining its technology, Uber’s Pittsburgh venture marks the first time such cars will be available to be hailed by the American public. (The world’s first autonomous taxi service began offering rides in Singapore at the end of August, edging out Uber by a few weeks.)
Pittsburgh, with its hills, narrow side streets, snow, and many bridges, may not seem like the ideal venue…