In today’s Bulldog wrapup of technology news:

  • Uber unveils its driverless car in Pittsburgh
  • The EU commits to 5G wireless
  • Pandora launches a new streaming service
  • A crackdown is made on tracking children online

The details:

  • Uber gives riders a preview of the driverless future

Uber riders in Pittsburgh can get a glimpse of the future by summoning a car capable of handling most of the tasks of driving on its own.

Starting Wednesday morning, a fleet of self-driving Ford Fusions will pick up Uber riders who opted to participate in a test program. While the vehicles are loaded with features that allow them to navigate on their own, an Uber engineer will sit in the driver’s seat and seize control if things go awry.

Uber’s test program is the latest move in an increasingly heated race between tech companies in Silicon Valley and traditional automakers to perfect fully driverless cars for regular people. Competitors such as Volvo and Google have invested hundreds of millions of dollars and logged millions of miles test driving autonomous vehicles, butUber is the first company in the U.S. to make self-driving cars available to the general public.

“That pilot really pushes the ball forward for us,” said Raffi Krikorian, Director of UberAdvanced Technologies Center (ATC) in Pittsburgh, the company’s main facility for testing self-driving vehicles. “We think it can help with congestion, we think it can make transportation cheaper and more accessible for the vast majority of people.”

Removing the cost of the driver is one way to make rides more affordable. But that prospect didn’t sit well with some Uber customers.

“It scares me not to have a driver there with an Uber,” said Claudia Tyler, a health executive standing near the entrance of an office in downtown Pittsburgh.

  • EU aims to deploy 5G technology Europe-wide by 2025

The European Union wants to make fifth-generation telecommunications technology available around the bloc and have free wireless connections in every city and major public venue within the next decade.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said Wednesday that the EU’s executive arm aims to have 5G technology deployed by 2025, saying that it could create 2 million jobs in Europe.

He told EU lawmakers that every European city and venue should have free wireless internet access by 2020.

Juncker called for more investment in high-speed internet, saying that “businesses should be able to plan their investments in Europe for the next 20 years.”

  • Pandora takes on Spotify, Apple with new streaming services

Pandora will soon take on Spotify, Apple Music and others in an extremely competitive field with its own, $10 monthly streaming music service, and a cheaper version as well.

The Internet radio company did not release details about the actual cost for the lower-priced service Tuesday, saying only that it would be “mid-priced.” The new services will launch before the end of the year, the company said.

The new subscription service will give users control over which songs they want to hear. Currently, Pandora users can’t select which songs or albums they want to listen to on demand. Instead, users choose artists or songs they like and Pandora puts together a playlist. An ad-free subscription service, called Pandora One, costs $5 a month.

Pandora is stepping into a fiercely contested environment. Spotify already has 30 million paying subscribers. And Apple Inc.’s music service, which launched last year, has 17 million. About 4 million subscribers pay for Pandora’s ad-free service. Its total listeners have fallen, down nearly 2 percent to 78.1 million in the second quarter, compared with the prior year before.

Ahead of the launch of the new subscription service, Pandora on Tuesday announced licensing deals with Sony Music, Universal Music Group and several independent record labels. It is still in talks with Warner Music Group and hopes to reach an agreement with the major label by the time the new services launch, it said.

Pandora declined to say Tuesday during a conference call how the on-demand subscriptions will work or how they will stand out from what is already offered by rivals.

  • NY settles with 4 companies to stop tracking children online

The state attorney general announced settlements Tuesday with Viacom, Mattel, Hasbro and JumpStart Games to stop them from using or allowing tracking technology on their popular children’s websites.

The settlements require Viacom, Mattel and JumpStart to pay penalties totaling $835,000 following a two-year investigation into violations of the 1998 federal law that prohibits unauthorized collection of children’s personal information on websites directed at users under 13. Hasbro won’t pay a penalty because it was enrolled in a Federal Trade Commission-approved online-privacy program that had some problems, according to the attorney general’s office.

All four companies allowed tracking technology such as cookies on their websites in violation of the law, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said. Such technology can be used by marketers and advertisers to target potential customers.

“The way the law is structured, the companies have the primary obligation to police their sites,” Schneiderman said. “When we notified them, they took immediate action.”