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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also opened an investigation into Cruise. California’s Department of Motor Vehicles says in a statement that it has determined that Cruise’s vehicles are not safe for public operation, and that the company ”misrepresented” safety information about its autonomous vehicle technology. In a filing on the suspension, the agency says that Cruise initially provided footage showing only the collision between its vehicle and the woman. It says Cruise did not disclose information about its car's subsequent “pull-over maneuver” that dragged the woman after the initial impact, and that the DMV only obtained full footage nine days after the crash. California has ordered the company Cruise to immediately stop operations of its driverless cars in the state. The Department of Motor Vehicles said on Tuesday that it was issuing the indefinite suspension because of safety issues with the vehicles.
Incidents
The resolution passed by the commissioners said that the CPUC did not have enough information to conclude that robotaxis have been operating unsafely in the city. It says the commission will push to update the companies’ data collection requirements, including information on unplanned stops and interactions with first responders. Two people dressed in dark colors and wearing masks dart into a busy street on a hill in San Francisco. In a video released by the company, a Cruise employee is seen in the passenger seat while the car drives itself through the darkened streets of San Francisco. Cruise’s vehicles all have an emergency switch in the center channel near the gear shift in case something goes wrong, and they are also monitored remotely by Cruise employees.
In A Divided San Francisco, Private Tech Buses Drive Tension
“Our teams are currently doing an analysis to identify potential enhancements to the [autonomous vehicle]’s response to this kind of extremely rare event,” she wrote in a statement. Despite those incidents, state regulators voted in August to allow self-driving car companies to expand their operations in San Francisco and other California cities. That prompted the city of San Francisco to file motions with the state demanding a halt to that expansion. The DMV originally gave Cruise a permit for 300 driverless vehicles in San Francisco, but it cut that number in half after one of its cars collided with a firetruck in August.
Rider Review
Despite the bumps in the road, both Waymo and Cruise are rapidly expanding their robo-taxi programs throughout the U.S. Waymo is already giving rides in Phoenix and is testing with human safety drivers in Los Angeles and Austin. And Cruise is offering rides in Phoenix and Austin and testing in Dallas, Houston, Miami, Nashville and Charlotte. "We thought that putting cones on these [driverless cars] was a funny image that could captivate people," says one organizer.
Neither Cruise nor Waymo responded to questions about why the cars can be disabled by traffic cones. An anonymous activist group called Safe Street Rebel is responsible for this so-called coning incident and dozens of others over the past few months. The group's goal is to incapacitate the driverless cars roaming San Francisco's streets as a protest against the city being used as a testing ground for this emerging technology. Cruise was approved to test fully driverless cars (also called Level 4 in industry parlance) in California on October 15th.
Becerra also provided the images below, showing a worker with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) inspecting the scene. Interestingly, a trail of fluid can be seen coming from beneath the car, but it's unclear if it's related to the situation or the Cruise vehicle itself. Drivers are growing frustrated with Cruise’s vehicles which keep stopping dead in traffic. Seven days after the vote, a Cruise car collided with a fire truck, injuring a passenger. "Our teams are currently doing an analysis to identify potential enhancements to the AV's response to this kind of extremely rare event," said Navideh Forghani, a Cruise spokesperson.
GM's Cruise faces long road back to city streets in wake of safety review - Reuters
GM's Cruise faces long road back to city streets in wake of safety review.
Posted: Wed, 31 Jan 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]
He says he'd like to see the companies focus on making sure the technology is actually safe. Cruise, the self-driving car company affiliated with General Motors and Honda, is testing fully driverless cars, without a human safety driver behind the steering wheel, in San Francisco. The company is among the first to test its driverless vehicles in a dense, complex urban environment. The suspensions mark a serious setback for the driverless vehicle industry, which has faced charges of under-regulation even as Cruise and others plan to expand to new cities across the US.
She added that the company's approach is "with safety as our north star." GM's spokesperson says it remains committed to Cruise "as they refocus on trust, accountability and transparency." They've tallied more than 55 incidents where self-driving cars have gotten in the way of rescue operations. Those incidents include driving through yellow emergency tape, blocking firehouse driveways, running over fire hoses and refusing to move for first responders. The suspension is a major setback for Cruise, which started testing its autonomous cars in San Francisco several years ago and introduced a limited driverless taxi service in the city last year. As covered by SFGate, multiple incidents have occurred around the city with the company's autonomous fleet of Chevrolet Bolts. In one Reddit post from last week, two of the company's cars can be seen blocking traffic near the intersection of Sacramento St and Leavenworth St.
By Andrew J. Hawkins, transportation editor with 10+ years of experience who covers EVs, public transportation, and aviation. Cruise's path to autonomous driving creates opportunities for increased mobility and independence. And, if you’re wondering what you can and cannot do in a robotaxi, check out The Standard’s handy guide here. Riders can also sign up for the waiting list through the Cruise app, which allows users to book cars.
"We don't really need traffic cones to show how vulnerable they are," says the Safe Street Rebel organizer. “As we expect demand will be incredibly high—there are over 100,000 people on our waitlist—we’ll be adding riders incrementally,” a Waymo spokesperson said Friday. General Motors-backed Cruise operates some 400 cars in its fleet—they’re practically everywhere in San Francisco. Board the ferry to Alcatraz from Fisherman's Wharf and walk the cell blocks that were once home to America's most notorious criminals, including Al Capone. Spend a few hours experiencing the Rock's mystique by visiting the Cell House and gardens, and hear firsthand experiences of time spent at the infamous prison.
Both Cruise and Waymo say their driverless cars are safer than human drivers – they don't get drunk, text or fall asleep at the wheel. The companies say they've driven millions of driverless miles without any human fatalities and the roads are safer with their autonomous systems in charge. Two days later, Cruise went further and voluntarily suspended all of its driverless operations around the country, taking 400 or so driverless cars off the road. Since then, Cruise’s board has hired the law firm Quinn Emanuel to investigate the company’s response to the incident, including its interactions with regulators, law enforcement and the media. Cruise and Waymo have said that these unpredicted stops are infrequent and are the safest way to handle “edge case,” or unusual, situations. But the city asked the CPUC to slow the deployment of self-driving cars, and to force the companies to hand over more specific data on what the vehicles are doing on its streets.
Cruise is still permitted to operate robotaxis in San Francisco with a human safety driver behind the wheel—which is how the company initially began to test self-driving cars in the city. For Cruise and Waymo, the approval was an important step toward turning billions spent chasing a signature dream of the tech industry into a viable business—and to delivering returns to external investors that have backed the projects. General Motors reported $1.9 billion in losses on Cruise in 2022, a jump over the $1.2 billion loss the year before, despite expanding its paid rides program. Waymo spokesperson Julia Ilina said in a statement that the company will gradually over the coming weeks invite more than 100,000 people on a waiting list for robotaxi service to ride. It's not the first time that Cruise's vehicles have been a nuisance on the roads of San Francisco.
"The software can make the autonomous vehicle behave as conservatively as possible because a safety violation would be very serious," Wan says. "But this may lead to concerns on the other side, like in some cases, even though it's safe it will fail to drive normally." The cars have run red lights, rear-ended a bus and blocked crosswalks and bike paths. In one incident, dozens of confused cars congregated in a residential cul-de-sac, clogging the street. Safe Street Rebel has cataloged hundreds of near misses and blunders with Cruise and Waymo vehicles over the past few months — even without traffic cones. The lead-up to the commission's vote prompted the Safe Street Rebel group to start "coning," as they call it.
However, we're rarely known for simply stopping dead in traffic and refusing to move. Cruise will need to solve these issues promptly if it is to avoid the wrath of the enraged commuters of downtown San Francisco. After the fire truck collision, the California Department of Motor Vehicles told Cruise to reduce its fleet in half, to 150 cars, while it investigated the incident. "Our folks cannot be paying attention to an autonomous vehicle when we've got ladders to throw," San Francisco Fire Chief Jeanine Nicholson said in an August hearing. Even before the October incident, tension over self-driving cars was simmering in San Francisco.
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