It's been just more than a year since Uber's fleet of self-driving Volvos took on Pittsburgh's streets.
In that time, the fleet of roughly 200 cars has driven more than 1 million miles and taken 30,000 trips. And Uber officials, at the company's Strip District Pittsburgh headquarters Wednesday, said they're planning to make improvements in transparency and comfort.
Currently, the self-driving cars are accompanied by two operators in the front seat, who make sure the car is running as safely as possible. The company wants to scale this back to one operator per vehicle through the remainder of 2017 and into 2018.
The cars are programmed so that grabbing the wheel or engaging the pedals immediately gives the driver control again.
Other updates are for the user experience, such as a screen in the back that shows what the car sensors see. There will also be less hardware in the trunk of the car for passengers to store luggage or large items.
Head of system safety Noah Zych acknowledged that Uber's self-driving cars have been involved in a few accidents in Pittsburgh, including one earlier this week at South Side Works.
"The first thing we do is of course make sure everyone is safe," he said. "Following that, we start an investigation ourselves."
Zych said the company obtains data from the vehicles involved to see if the software or operators were at fault in the incident. He says so far, there's been no incident where that was the case.
Recently the company said its autonomous cars still have trouble reading cyclist turn signals and can't always see them if they're too close to the car.
However, a survey by bike advocacy group Bike Pittsburgh, found that most cyclists and pedestrians like the idea of self-driving cars. They don't block intersections, make Pittsburgh lefts or get road rage.
“The bar is pretty low for these AVs (Autonomous vehicles) to reach in order to be safer than humans,” said Bike Pittsburgh advocacy director Eric Boerer.
However, Uber has said that public trust will remain a critical factor as it moves forward with self-driving technology.
