The company Cruisewho belongs to General Motorscontinue son expansion into the field of robot taxis or driverless taxis. Cruise recently announced that she will be looking to other cities in the state of texas after Austin. The company will thus begin supervised tests in the cities of Dallas and of Houston.
According to the information, this expansion will initially focus on the familiarization of the cars with the chosen areas. Robot taxis will not take passengers right away. Besides, some safety conductors will always be present in autonomous vehicles.
According to a post by Cruise on Twitter, supervised testing in the city of Houston will begin in the coming days. Trials in Dallas will begin a little later.
The opinion of the authorities
It can be said that Cruise and his robot taxis are developing very rapidly. The authorities did not fail to react in the face of this expansion which may not be managed properly.
Last January, the Transport Authority de San Franciscothe body responsible for transportation in that city, has asked regulators to limit or temporarily suspend the expansion of Cruise and its competitor Waymo. According to officials, there would be repetitive cases of taxi-robots stopping in the middle of trafficblocking emergency vehicles.
Despite this demand from the city of San Francisco, the expansion of self-driving taxi companies does not seem to be slowing down. Cruise, for example, has just celebrated the 1.6 million kilometers that its cars have traveled without a driver.
The public will still have to wait
Currently, Cruise’s robot taxis can already carry passengers on a limited basis overnight in Austin and Phoenix. On the San Francisco side, vehicles can work all day in some areas of the city.
As for Dallas and Houston, it is not yet known when the public will be able to use Cruise’s vehicles. If we refer to previous expansions, it is likely that we still need wait several months. When the dates are announced, it is also to be expected that service is limited to small groups of people overnight. All those who want to benefit from Cruise’s service must register on a list and wait to be accepted in order to create an account.
SOURCE: Engadget
