Gadgetory

self-driving cars are a hot topic here at CES 2019 and ride-hailing service lyft has been offering rides in self-driving cars here in Las Vegas since last May I opted in the second I got off of the plane I had to try it out but unfortunately I've only been paired with human drivers so far that changes now come on we're gonna go for a drive so the car I'm getting into is a BMW 540i that lifts partner active just bought off a lot and retrofitted with cameras wide R and a whole mess of sensors it even has an autonomous license plate the state of Nevada each autonomous vehicle has to have two drivers one behind the wheel and a safety operator who's kind of like a co-pilot Aaron Vegas every ride starts with manual mode and that is because this is private property here in the casino as soon as we get onto the public road that's when we switch over to autonomous mode one thing I noticed thing is we're stopping and starting here at the lights on the Las Vegas Strip is how smooth the car is it just feels like Vernon here is a very careful driver a cards are just kind of cut in front of us pretty quickly and we did break but it felt smooth and you know we didn't get too close to it honestly sitting in the backseat if I were paying attention at all I would have absolutely no idea that we were it may seem at first that there's not a lot for the driver to do but they really have to pay attention to the road and they've got to really make sure that all of the turns and all of the stops know the started are actually safe is that the part is performing as it's expected to the driver also isn't just window dressing you know there are manually starting the car on private roads are helping to you and they're interfacing between not just the technology but the company and you if you've got a problem there's a human that you can talk to you're not just trapped inside of a metal machine here in the back we've got a screen and this really I think will help engage the passenger to show them exactly where they're going so they've got that level of confidence right now this is what we're seeing but in the future we could see a lot more information that explains the technology okay so this ride was pretty short and to be honest it was a little bit boring because nothing really happened but that's good right because when you're a passenger not much is supposed to happen I got from point A to point B using the same app it was really simple I think there's an initial curiosity about what's going on and then I think that once people become used to it that curiosity is gonna wear off and you're gonna go back to spending your entire lift ride either talking to the driver or the not driver or looking at your phone and still it was just really exciting to be part of something that is going to show tremendously change the way that people get around this is the future we're looking at right here if you want to know more about autonomous vehicles check out CNET and our sister site roadshow