DALLAS — How does the thought of looking over in traffic and seeing no one behind the wheel of a moving car or semi-truck make you feel?
Well, here in North Texas, you may have seen one of those scenarios already!
The use of self-driving rideshares, public transportation, and trucking and shipping is making its way into major cities across the country.
In Arlington, "RAPID," the city's on-demand, self-driving service rolled out a fleet of more spacious, accessible vehicles to take passengers around downtown and the University of Texas at Arlington.
It's been around for two years and has provided more than 31,000 rides since its launch in March 2021.
At a low cost, too: The fares are usually $3 to $5, depending on the distance.
The automation hasn't just hit the industry for passenger rides.
Near the end of 2020, WAYMO started testing the use of self-driving trucks on stretches of highway like I-45 from Dallas to Houston!
The trucks still carry humans—a trained truck driver and Waymo technicians—to supervise and take over, if necessary.
The company hopes to use the Class 8 trucks to move the more than 1.5 billion tons of freight moved each year on state highways.
TXDOT numbers from 2021 show the freight industry supports 4.4 million jobs in a wide variety of freight-producing and consuming industries annually.
It's too soon to tell, but some experts forecast a major automation of the industry would take away a majority of those.
While others argue there's more to the job than just driving and may not result in the loss of many jobs but will change the responsibilities.
Either way, we won't know until it's more common place.
For now, we want to know, what do you think about all of this?
Would you take a ride?
As always, if you have a traffic concern in your area, you can email us here.