Lyft and Waymo Reach Deal to Collaborate on Self-Driving Cars
Lyft, the ride hailing company, and Waymo, the self-driving car unit under Google have announced a deal to bring self-driving vehicles to the public. Uber is also investing hundreds of millions of dollars to develop this technology in what could become a multi-billion dollar industry. Waymo vehicles have logged more than three million miles of on the road testing in California, Arizona, Texas, and Washington and could be ready for mass adoption soon.
Discussion Questions
1. What do you see as the costs and benefits of self-driving cars? Do the benefits outweigh the costs?
2. If self-driving cars become widely adopted, should there be a mix of human operated cars and self-driving cars?
3. How could you envision Lyft and Waymo working well together? What trouble could they encounter?
I'm interested to see what the logistics of such a program would be. Self driving cars still need people to man them and make sure they don't get into accidents that the computer fails to notice- so does this mean that these "drivers" would still get paid, but less? I think it's fine to have a mix of self-driving and human operated cars- the computers should be able to manage driving with real humans, otherwise they don't seem to be that effective. As for the collaboration, I think there could be trouble if the two companies have different goals, which may cause disagreement that causes the collab to fall through.
ReplyDeleteI'm curious when these will be sanctioned for public use. How do the cars handle unusual road patterns? Can the Cars follow the flow of traffic (i.e. Go faster than the speed limit if they need to)? If a self-Driving Car gets a ticket, is the owner responsible? All of these things need to be answered before I'm convinced to buy one.
ReplyDeleteI don't really trust the self-driving car. I would feel safer if I knew that I was driving. Plus it is probably really expensive. I think they could work together but there could be some bumps in the road if they do not have the same goals or achievements.
ReplyDeleteI do not think it is a good idea, because all these human cab drivers are going to lose their jobs.
ReplyDeleteThe benefits are that we don't need humans to drive cars, and their business would make money. The costs are that many drivers will lose their jobs, and a lot of money will have to be invested in this new technology for people to get used to the idea and trust it.
ReplyDeleteIt'a privilege to be able to use a car. We shouldn't strip that. Driving helps us control how fast we need to get to our destination. Having the probability to succeed would probably cause more congestion in traffic in the cause failed programming.
ReplyDeleteI think a self driving car is a bad idea. It just shows how lazy everyone is getting.
ReplyDeleteI agree that a self driving car is a bad idea because it shows how we are becoming lazy. We also do not know if these cars are completely safe.
ReplyDeleteI think a benefit in self driving cars is that the it could save the employers money of hiring human drivers but it could cost a lot of people their jobs if all taxi companies are going to start using these self driving cars.
ReplyDeleteI would say that the costs of making a self driven car would be fairly expensive but benefit of self-driven cars will be tremendous. I would think that the befits would outweigh the cost because even though it would be expensive to create it would save people tons of time and would the company money and time to finding new drivers who will be more expensive than a self driven car. Ido believe that there should be a mix in self-driven cars and human operated cars for the reason of not knowing when the self-driven will fail. If the self-driven car does happen to fail there will be a human would could override the system and possibly save their life if anything bad does happen.
ReplyDeleteThe cost is the trust of the self driving car. The benefits is that it just kills time and you can do more stuff while driving. Safety outweighs coolness. Yes because people have their own emotions and it affects their driving
ReplyDeleteself driving cars on their own bring a plethora of possible concerns just conceptually, even before bringing in the fact that they are intended to be used to ferry people throughout cities and more without human involvement. what will this do to people who work for uber? what regulations will have to be enacted? how can it be ensured that the car will not be commandeered? there are any concerns to consider about self driving cars alone before any major investments in business are to be considered
ReplyDeleteSelf driving cars can increase revenue of both companies being it will have more cars out driving earning money for the company.
ReplyDeleteI believe that this partnership is a good thing and it is moving america in a step towards the future, while there are of cores worries about security and safety with this technology I believe that the possibilities and the dangers it will be reducing are worth examining. there is often the concern of vehicles being taken over but i believe as long as anti hacker software is placed and continually updated then things will be OK. Once self driving cars take off I believe it would be the best in terms of efficiency if the amount of human on the reads was reduced because once you take out the human unpredictability factor the computers will be able to communicate much more effectively and help all transportation be significantly less time consuming.
ReplyDeleteI think that some people may be hesitant in buying a self-driving car just because it would be so new and there wouldn't be a reputation of the cars to go off on. I think that some people may want to have their safety in their own hands rather than relying on a computer. I think that a mix of self driving and human driven cars is a good thing. I do think that they could work well together but problems could come up if the two have different visions or views.
ReplyDeleteI would be hard to see lyft and waymo benefitting from all of this especially since their business depends on human drivers.
ReplyDeleteI think self driving cars are in the future just what would happen if it gets in a accident then the company is sued. This would create high risk for companies that have self driving cars.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I think the idea of self-driving cars is very interesting and futuristic, there needs to be good research and thorough testing done before anyone lets the cars out on the roads.
ReplyDeletei like the idea of self- driving care but like katie said alot of research has to be done to this cause they can be very dangerous at the same time
ReplyDeleteSelf-driving cars seems like a very cool thing but it can result in a lot of trouble. There is already lots of driving accidents that are caused from people driving cars,I can't imagine what would happen if self driving cars malfunctioned while having people in it.
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