Oakland and Pittsburgh residents may have seen a set of high tech blue vans driving across the city\u2019s streets.<\/p>\n
After about a year of testing its regular vehicles in Pittsburgh, autonomous ride-hailing service Waymo<\/a> began testing<\/a> its new Ojai vans in Pittsburgh this past summer. The company has been testing its autonomous vehicles across the country, though some who study robotics and network systems at Pitt question their safety in Pittsburgh.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Waymo announced its expansion<\/a> into Pittsburgh in December 2025 and received a permit<\/a> in February 2026 that allowed the vehicles to operate without humans behind the wheel. However, the company told<\/a> the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette it will continue to place a trained specialist in the driver\u2019s seat.\u00a0<\/p>\n Waymo did not respond to a request for comment by The Pitt News.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Pitt News spotted one van on Fifth Avenue in Oakland in late August.<\/p>\n Jackie Krausche, a junior engineering science major and member of the Robotics and Automation Society<\/a> at Pitt, said she is \u201call for\u201d autonomous transportation for trains, having worked on upgrading fully autonomous trains in the New York City subway and Los Angeles metro system last summer.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, Krausche isn\u2019t convinced autonomous transportation for cars driving on any public roads is practical, safe, or a possible solution to traffic congestion, especially in the city of Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n \u201cNo algorithm, AI or software can account for Pittsburgh\u2019s weird road design<\/a>, bikes and scooters, pedestrians, animals, construction, et cetera,\u201d Krausche said. \u201cYou\u2019re adding more cars to the road, which take up a lot of space in lanes.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Na Du, an assistant professor of informatics and network systems, said the biggest challenge with autonomous vehicles is that there are unlimited situations when driving a vehicle, whether it\u2019s unusual road geometry, bad weather or pedestrians.<\/p>\n \u201cThe challenge is not to make the vehicle safe, but also to enable it to interact naturally, efficiently and predictably with human drivers, pedestrians and cyclists,\u201d Du said.<\/p>\n Du said Waymo detects and predicts pedestrians using sensors like cameras and radar to interpret the environment. According to Du, the system not only has to identify a pedestrian but also track how that person is moving and predict future movement. Du believes these challenges make the university environment \u201cinteresting and difficult\u201d for autonomous vehicles.<\/p>\n \u201cA student may be walking along the sidewalk and suddenly cross the street to meet a friend or catch a bus or even in groups of pedestrians, bicycles, scooters, parked vehicles blocking visibility and people crossing outside a marked crosswalk,\u201d Du said. \u201cAn autonomous vehicle has to reason about uncertainty if it cannot clearly determine what a pedestrian is going to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Du said larger vehicles like the new Waymo vans also create additional engineering challenges, explaining that they have a larger physical footprint, different turning characteristics and greater difficulty maneuvering on narrow streets or finding safe pick-up and drop-off locations.<\/p>\n \u201cThese challenges are particularly relevant around Oakland, where there are frequent construction zones, congested street and heavy pedestrian traffic often entering and leaving unpredictably,\u201d Du said.<\/p>\n University spokesperson Meredith Herndon said Pitt students should refer to Pitt\u2019s campus safety tips<\/a> for ride-sharing and research Waymo before using it in the future.<\/p>\n \u201cPitt students should review the ride information, share trip details with friends, and make sure that they understand the safety features of the app they are using,\u201d Herndon said.<\/p>\n Krausche expressed worry that the rise of self-driving cars will lead to extensive lobbying in transportation planning, which she believes could cause city planners to cut pedestrian-friendly design and build Waymo parking lots so self-driving cars can move through cities without issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis is similar to how car companies in the 1950s and 60s lobbied<\/a> to build highways<\/a> through downtowns of cities, bulldozing neighborhoods. Imagine the next generation of Waymo-only highways,\u201d Krausche said.<\/p>\n Krausche argued that public transit is itself an autonomous alternative to driving, explaining that it \u201cgives the burden of driving to the bus or train operator,\u201d without the risks posed by self-driving cars.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTransit is safe \u2014 very little risk of traffic collisions,\u201d Krausche said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oakland and Pittsburgh residents may have seen a set of high tech blue vans driving across the city\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277297,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73,75,74],"class_list":["post-277296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}