Dropping off passengers vexes self-driving cars, the last step is a doozie
I was using a ridesharing service last month in Detroit to get to a restaurant after having spoken at a conference on autonomous vehicles. The driver decided that trying to stop in front of the restaurant to let me out of the car would be difficult because there were other cars parked there, meaning he’d need to temporarily double-park or at least come to a standstill to let me out, and he’d also be directly in the street, stalling traffic on a rather hectic and tight downtown passageway. He spied instead a bus stop that was wide open, just past the restaurant, though a large group of people were waiting anxiously for a bus to arrive and the marked area or zone clearly said it was exclusively for bus loading and unloading only.