As of September, Uber has decided to start testing driverless vehicles on the streets after announcing a 300 million dollar deal with Volvo to start manufacturing them.

Because of human error, car accidents have become the leading cause of death for people between one to forty four. Therefore, driverless vehicles are supposed to be safer.

A Senior Franklin high school student, Nicole Dorfman, is one of many car drivers who does not feel comfortable putting their trust into a driverless vehicle.

“I believe it would help benefit people who have a history of drinking and driving or texting. However I do not trust the fact that the car is making the decision because a program can easily make an error and harm either the person inside the vehicle or besides it,” Nicole stated.

Unfortunately, there has been one incident with a Tesla in which someone was using it in Pilot mode and died in a fatal crash. It is currently being investigated in order to see what can be fixed to assure that it doesn’t keep happening.

Uber has just started using self driving cars around the city of Pittsburgh, however each vehicle must have someone in front in case they need to take control of the vehicle as well as a technician because it is still only being tested out.

Many wonder how these vehicles operate. There are radar sensors around the car monitor that detect the position of cars nearby. A video camera detects traffic lights, road signs, pedestrians, other cars, and obstacles while Lidar sensors help to detect the edges of roads and identify lane markings by bouncing pulses of light off the car’s surroundings.

By 2020, Uber is hoping to operate driverless vehicles in other cities as well if they are successful.