Over the past few months, hundreds of self-driving cars have been spotted on the streets of the US' San Francisco. Recently, a video is going viral on Reddit where a man in San Francisco requested for an Uber cab ride. However, he was left astonished when a car with no driver in it arrived to take him to his desired destination.
Uber in San Francisco:
The video, titled "Getting a Uber in San Francisco be like," shows the view from the backseat of the driverless car. During the whole duration of the video, the front seat of the driver can be seen empty with the steering wheel moving autonomously on its own. A tablet displaying various prompts is fastened to the rear of the passenger's seat, and voice prompts can be heard inside the car as well.
The video has garnered a lot of attention online and sparked interesting discussions among many internet users. While a section of the internet thought that this was really cool, others were quite apprehensive about the safety of such cars. “I saw one of those get stuck in the middle of a 4-way causing traffic. A cop car was honking and turning the lights on trying to make it move lol,” a user wrote.
Another joked, ''To unlock doors, please pay the release fee now.''
“Scary. No, thank you,” a third said, while a fourth added, ''Objectively speaking, The human drivers are just as scary or worse.''
“Lol when I was a teen video calls were something sci-fi stuff only seen in few movies, and here we are with " automatic taxis" feeling old,” another user wrote.
It's worth noting that tech billionaire Bill Gates recently took a ride in a self-driving car in downtown London and was convinced that autonomous vehicles (AV) are the future. He was impressed with the vehicle's ability to navigate through the challenging traffic of London. In a blog post describing his experience, Gates mentioned, "The car drove us around downtown London, which is one of the most challenging driving environments imaginable, and it was a bit surreal to be in the car as it dodged all the traffic."
However, Gates also noted that the transition to fully autonomous cars may not become a prevalent reality for several decades.
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