Uber is launching a fleet of self-driving cars to pick up passengers in Pittsburgh — and the vehicles will be hitting the roads in as soon as a few weeks. The autonomous Ford Fusions are "supervised by humans in the driver's seat for the time being," Bloomberg reports, although Uber plans to eventually phase out human backup drivers.
"The goal is to wean us off of having drivers in the car, so we don't want the public talking to our safety drivers," Uber engineering director Raffi Krikorian told Bloomberg. Pittsburgh customers will be randomly paired with driverless cars through the Uber app, and the ride will cost the same as the local rate of $1.30 a mile.
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