Uber, MADD, and law enforcement partnered on July 4 in 25 cities

By Bruce Brown Published July 25, 2016

Did you have good time on the Fourth of July? While the Independence Day holiday weekend is a wonderful time for celebration, unfortunately it’s also the occasion of many traffic deaths. According to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), there are more deaths in vehicle crashes on July 4 than any other day. And in 2014 alcohol was a factor in almost half of the Independence Day vehicle deaths, according to Uber’s newsroom.

This year Uber partnered with Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and local law enforcement agencies in 25 U.S. cities to raise awareness about drunk driving alternatives prior to the holiday weekend. Uber also offered discounted or free rides in the same 25 cities on July 4. And apparently, Uber’s program had a noticeable and positive effect.

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Results from all states aren’t yet available, according to Uber, but preliminary reports for California, Chicago, San Antonio, and Virginia indicate those states experienced fewer drunk driving arrests and deaths on this year’s Independence Day. The state of Nevada had particularly significant results, in that for the first time in ten years it experienced no DUI-related deaths.

“Over the 4th of July weekend, Uber partnered with the NV DPS/OTS and NHP in an effort to educate Nevadans about safe transportation alternatives to impaired driving,” said Officer David Gibson of the Nevada Department of Public Safety. “This promotion yielded zero alcohol-related fatal crashes over the 4th of July weekend, the first time in over ten years in Nevada. Part of this success is thanks to our holiday partnership with Uber, which helped spread the message of safe and sober transportation options.”

Uber is going to continue as MADD’s designated-driver partner, based on data that shows significantly more ride requests into the evening of July 4. In surveys, Uber has found that more than 80 percent of its riders have reported that Uber helps them avoid drunk driving. In this case, it appears that an awareness program may be making a noticeable difference in keeping our roads safer.

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Bruce Brown Contributing Editor As a Contributing Editor to the Auto teams at Digital Trends and TheManual.com, Bruce…

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Audi halts vehicle deliveries to the U.S. as it mulls impact of tariffs

2021 Audi Q5

If you’d been thinking of buying an Audi, now might be the time. The German brand, owned by the Volkswagen Group, has announced it would halt shipments to the U.S. in the wake of President Donald Trump’s 25% tariffs on all imported vehicles.
Audi is currently holding cars that arrived after the tariffs took effect, on April 3, in U.S. ports. But it still has around 37,000 vehicles in its U.S. inventory, which should be able to meet demand for about two months, according to Reuters.
Automakers on average hold enough cars to meet U.S. demand for about three months, according to Cox Automotive.
Audi should be particularly affected by the tariffs: The Q5, its best-selling model in the U.S., is produced in Mexico, while other models, such as the A3, A4, and A6 are produced in Germany.
Holding shipments is obviously a temporary measure to buy time for Audi and parent company Volkswagen. If tariffs stay in place, vehicle prices would likely have to go up accordingly, unless some production is shifted to the U.S. Volkswagen already has a plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and is planning a new plant in South Carolina. That latter plant, however, isn’t expected to be operational until 2027 and is currently dedicated to building electric vehicles for VW’s Scout Motors brand.
Other global automakers have also taken drastic measures in response to Trump’s tariffs. Jaguar Land Rover on April 5 said it is pausing shipments of its its UK-made cars to the United States this month. The British sports-luxury vehicle maker noted that the U.S. market accounts for nearly a quarter of its global sales, led by the likes of Range Rover Sports, Defenders, and Jaguar F-PACE.
And on April 3, Nissan, the biggest Japanese vehicle exporter to the United States, announced it will stop taking new U.S. orders for two Mexican-built Infiniti SUVs, the QX50 and QX55.

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Waymo faces questions about its use of onboard cameras for AI training, ads targeting

Two people exit a Waymo taxi.

In an iconic scene from the 2002 sci-fi film Minority Report, on-the-run Agent John Anderton, played by Tom Cruise, struggles to walk through a mall as he’s targeted by a multitude of personalized ads from the likes of Lexus, Guinness and American Express, everytime hidden detectors identify his eyes.
It was clearly meant as a warning about a not-so-desirable dystopian future.
Yet, 23 years later that future is at least partlially here in the online world and threatens to spread to other areas of daily life which are increasingly ‘connected’, such as the inside of cars. And the new testing grounds, according to online security researcher Jane Manchun Wong, might very well be automated-driving vehicles, such as Waymo’s robotaxis.
On X, Wong unveiled an unreleased version of Waymo’s privacy policy that suggests the California-based company is preparing to use data from its robotaxis, including interior cameras, to train generative AI models and to offer targetted ads.
“Waymo may share data to improve and analyze its functionality and to tailor products, services, ads, and offers to your interests,” the Waymo’s unreleased privacy statement reads. “You can opt out of sharing your information with third parties, unless it’s necessary to the functioning of the service.”
Asked for comments about the unreleased app update, Waymo told The Verge that it contained “placeholder text that doesn’t accurately reflect the feature’s purpose”.
Waymo’s AI-models “are not designed to use this data to identify individual people, and there are no plans to use this data for targeted ads,” spokesperson Julia Ilina said.
Waymo’s robotaxis, which are operating on the streets of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Austin, do contain onboard cameras that monitor riders. But Ilina says these are mainly used to train AI models for safety, finding lost items, check that in-car rules are followed, and to improve the service.
The new feature is still under development and offers riders an opportunity to opt out of data collection, Ilina says.
But as we all get used to ads targeting based on everything that’s somehow connected to the web, it seems a once-distant vision of the future may be just around the corner.

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Waymo’s driverless cars are about to begin an overseas adventure

Waymo Jaguar I-Pace

Waymo’s autonomous cars are about to appear on streets outside of the U.S. for the first time.

The company on Wednesday announced on social media that its autonomous cars will be driving onto the streets of Tokyo, Japan, “soon,” with some reports suggesting the rollout will begin as early as next week.