Seeking solitude and safety, riders flock to robotaxis driven by computers

Photo by Elizabeth Weise

Susan Shaheen, the Transportation Sustainability Research Center’s co-director, discusses safety as a motivation for using robotaxis. 

"Autonomous vehicles are designed to travel a little more cautiously and conservatively, which can make them less erratic than human-driven cars, said Susan Shaheen, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California Berkeley who’s been studying self-driving cars for 30 years."