Your next pizza delivery may arrive in a driverless car

September 26, 2017, Kitchener, Ontario

Posted by: Robert Deutschmann, Personal Injury Lawyer

Domino's Pizza announced that starting the end of August they would be experimenting with driverless delivery car technology. The company will start the experiment in its hometown of Ann Arbor Michigan using a Ford Fusion autonomous car.

You’ll place your order as usual but it will come to your house in the car equipped with radar and a camera and the autonomous driving technology. For this experiment phase, there will be a Ford Engineer at the wheel, but the windows will be blacked out so no one can see or interact with the driver.

When the car arrives at the delivery address the person who ordered the pizza will get a text message. They will have to come out of their building and meet the car at the designated point. The car will have a key pad that you put your 4-digit code into and the back window will open. At that point you’ll remove your pizza from the heated compartment that at this point can carry up to 4 pies and 5 sides.

Dominos will be carefully examining how customers are interacting with the car, and examining their preferences about where to send the car at the address (driveway/curbside etc.). There are some questions whether people will go outside in bad weather to pick up their delivery. Will people inadvertently damage car technology by putting things on the car? Will they be able to navigate the key-pad system?

According to Dominos most of issues around this new delivery method occur in the ‘last 50 feet of the delivery experience’ and human behavior. Is it really delivery pizza if you have to get dressed and leave your home to pick up the pizza? What about apartment complexes or rural addresses? Customers will be chosen at random when they order pizzas and their consent will be obtained before the vehicle is dispatched. It seems for now you’ll be given the option of going out in the rain or snow to retrieve your order.

Dominos delivers nearly 1 billion pizzas every year and they are exploring all new technologies and cost savings measures including autonomous cars and drone delivery technologies. The company says that they envision drivers replaced by automated cars will take on different roles in the company.

Ford had teamed up with Dominos in the endeavour because they have pledged to develop a fully autonomous vehicle by 2021 and need the practical research data to fully understand the practical elements of the technology.  Human behavior is tricky to predict and program it appears.

About Deutschmann Law

Deutschmann Law serves South-Western Ontario with offices in Kitchener-Waterloo, Cambridge, Woodstock, Brantford, Stratford and Ayr. The law practice of Robert Deutschmann focuses almost exclusively in personal injury and disability insurance matters. For more information, please visit www.deutschmannlaw.com or call us at 1-519-742-7774.

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