Image credit – REUTERS/Stephen Lam
While self-driving cars are the current focus, who’s to say that the technology can’t be applied to public transportation as well, such as buses? In a report from Reuters, it seems that over in San Francisco, a pair of $250,000 self-driving buses is currently undergoing testing in an empty parking lot where it is expected to eventually make its way onto the open road.
These are self-driving buses in the literal sense of the word because there will be no backup drivers in them. This means that it will be 100% autonomous and there will not be a person in there or a steering wheel that will correct the buses or hit the brakes should anything go wrong, so we guess it makes sense that they are still being tested in an empty space.
The testing is expected to take place over the course of the next few months in parking lots before its operators apply for Department of Motor Vehicles approval, and should testing prove successful and they are giving the approval to go ahead and put them on the roads, public road trials are expected to take place either later this year or possibly early 2018.
San Francisco won’t be the first to roll out autonomous public transportation. Over in countries such as Singapore, self-driving taxis are a thing, and last year we heard that they were also planning on implementing driverless pods that would be used on smaller roads within neighborhoods.
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