Autonomous Vehicles

Later this year, Ford, Lyft and Argo AI will bring autonomous ride-hailing cars to Miami-Dade County, Fla., and Austin, Texas. For this rollout, safety drivers will be in the front seats of the cars just in case.

Research by Michigan State University and Ford Mobility examined connected vehicle data to gain insights into driving styles and incidents, potentially allowing for safety problems to be addressed before a crash occurs.

States like Arizona and Texas have positioned themselves as hubs for autonomous vehicle testing and deployments, in part, by creating regulatory landscapes that are easy for new companies to navigate.

The personal self-driving car has been derided as little more than whimsy by many transportation watchers, who see fleet vehicles and public transit as the real beneficiaries of autonomous vehicle technology.

The 10th annual Transportation Research Board Automated Road Transportation Symposium explored the myriad policy questions and debates surrounding connected and autonomous vehicle technology.

Lake Nona, a 17-square-mile pivate planned community near Orlando International Airport in Florida, is a citywide test site for “movement analytics” technology to better understand traffic and other forms of mobility.

A vehicle-to-everything project deployed on The Ray, a highway technology testbed in rural Georgia, will add roadside communication units and in-vehicle technology to improve communications and highway safety.

On Tuesday, FedEx announced a partnership with Nuro, one of the nation's leading autonomous vehicle companies, to test the use of driverless vehicles for multi-stop and appointment-based deliveries in Houston, Texas.

Relay, an autonomous shuttle program launched in Fairfax County, Va., in October 2020, is offering officials a better understanding of how driverless shuttles navigate live traffic and how to improve work zone safety.

Expect to see more low-speed, autonomous shuttle projects developing into full-scale integrated transit services. The Jacksonville Transportation Authority in Florida plans to launch the first phase of AV shuttles into its transit mix by 2023.

Peachtree Corners, Ga., is partnering with Qualcomm Technologies and Jacobs to deploy direct vehicle-to-everything communications in two city vehicles as a development to improve safety and traffic management.

Plus, Google’s voice assistant gets better at pronouncing names, a hacked password manager compromises information for nearly 30,000 users and cryptocurrency companies tackle climate change.

When cars can operate themselves, the central question will be whether accidents are the manufacturer’s responsibility or whether the fault would lie with the driver and be covered by personal auto insurance.

Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport is experimenting with autonomous technology from ThorDrive in its vehicles carrying luggage between the terminal and aircraft.

Drones, robots and self-driving cars were all buzzing through downtown Westminster, Md., on Thursday for the ribbon-cutting of the first phase of MAGIC's autonomous corridor project in the region.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles is determining if Tesla engages in false advertising about the vehicle's self-driving capabilities. The investigation comes as Tesla faces numerous lawsuits and criticisms.

The California Highway Patrol is looking into a sighting on an Oakland freeway of a Tesla with only one passenger in the backseat. Two photos posted on Facebook seem to confirm the vehicle was illegally driving itself.

How states choose to regulate insurance and liability for self-driving cars may impact how quickly consumers adopt them, but many questions remain around how and when to set these new policies.