PARIS – In a city hit by chronic pollution and traffic problems, Paris officials are experimenting with a self-driving shuttle linking two train stations in the French capital. Two electric-power EZ10 minibuses, which can carry up to six seated passengers, were put into service Monday and will be tested until early April between the Lyon and Austerlitz stations in Paris. The GPS-guided vehicle is free and will be running seven days a week. "To respond to the pollution emergency in big urban zones it is urgent to innovate with new transportation systems that are more environmentally friendly," said Catherine Baratti-Elbaz, head of the local district where the test is taking place. Jean-Louis Missika, a Paris deputy mayor in charge of innovation, said self-driving vehicles "will change the urban landscape in a spectacular fashion" within the next 20 years.

One of the world's leading autonomous vehicle researchers has warned that the world is'on a collision course' with self driving vehicles. The new technology threatens millions of jobs and raises a slew of ethical dilemmas--prospects that were on the minds of business chiefs and politicians meeting at the World Economic Forum this week. 'Companies are going to have to start thinking about it, governments are going to have to start thinking about it,' said Missy Cummings, the director of the Humans and Autonomy Lab at Duke University in North Carolina. 'The reality is we can't just keep our head in the sand like an ostrich,' she told AFP in Davos, singling out the coming impact on employment. In the United States alone, an estimated four million people work as truckers, taxi drivers and in other jobs that are under threat when the driverless vehicles come into widespread use--a matter of years, experts predict.