Here's a potential timesaver this Black Friday: a smartphone app that will deploy a robot to hold a parking space for you at the mall.
Details: MyPark is a Miami-based parking reservation service that, per Forbes, deploys mobile space blockers to hold spots for customers willing to pay a few dollars for the convenience.
My thought bubble: Parking is a pain, especially during the holidays. If you can use technology to save your spot, you won't have to push your kid out of the car to stand there while you circle back around. And you don't have to tip the valet, either.
The job of autonomous vehicle safety driver seems pretty easy: Get paid for sitting there while the car does all the work. But it's a challenging assignment and self-regulated by the companies testing AVs, so the rules are only beginning to emerge.
The big picture: Safety drivers are researchers' eyes and ears, chronicling every roadway encounter to make the technology better. But requiring drivers — even specially trained ones — to pay attention without actually driving is difficult, which is why many companies argue that full autonomy is the safest way to go.
Background: Last March, a pedestrian was struck and killed by an Uber-operated self-driving car in Tempe, Arizona. The human monitoring the vehicle was believed to be watching a television show on her phone.
How it works: Safety drivers typically work in pairs, one in the driver's seat monitoring the environment and the other riding shotgun with a laptop, monitoring the car's computing system and annotating the drive.
The work can be physically and mentally demanding. The pilot has to be alert, with their fingers lightly cupped around the steering wheel and their foot hovering over the pedals.
AV safety drivers don't need a special permit, but states like California require that they have a valid driver's license and undergo AV training.
What's next: California and Arizona have already given Waymo permission to test vehicles in their states without a safety driver, and the Google self-driving car unit plans to launch its fully driverless service in Phoenix next month.
Go deeper:
Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn has been arrested on allegations of under-reporting his income to the Tokyo Stock Exchange "over many years" and utilizing company assets for personal use. The company's board will meet Thursday to seek his removal.
The big picture: For most of his career, Ghosn had this superhero mystique — a turnaround expert and automotive visionary who favored corporate alliances, not mergers, for global success. But Ghosn never came close to achieving his vision of an all-electric world, and his edicts for 10% U.S. market share led Nissan to engage in unprofitable discounting and corner-cutting that led to quality problems.
