It was a week of robotaxi mayhem in San Francisco for the Cruise driverless car company — by turns bizarre, comic and alarming.
As a result, the California Department of Motor Vehicles said Friday it’s investigating “recent concerning incidents” involving Cruise vehicles while tapping the brakes on the company’s ambitious expansion plans.
The DMV didn’t say which incidents it’s probing, but over a seven-day period the events included:
— The bizarre, when a group of Cruise robotaxis drove together into the city’s North Beach district on the night of Aug. 11, froze in place, sat for 15 minutes blocking an intersection, then drove on. Cruise blamed cellphone service.
— The comic, when a Cruise robotaxi ignored construction signs on Tuesday and headed into a stretch of cement. Stuck in the wet muck, it was removed later by workers dispatched by Cruise.
— The alarming, when a Cruise robotaxi entered an intersection on a green light even as a fast-moving fire truck, lights flashing and siren blaring, approached. The truck struck the car, occupied by one passenger, who was transported to a hospital. Cruise said the passenger sustained “what we believe are non-severe injuries.”
The day after the injury crash, the DMV announced its investigation and said Cruise agreed to halve the size of its fleet, to 50 robotaxis during the day and 150 at night. In a prepared statement, Cruise said it looks forward to working with the DMV and posted its version of events online.
The company plans to populate the city with thousands of robotaxis. Another company, Waymo, has similar plans. Cruise is owned by General Motors, Waymo by Alphabet, parent company of Google.
The DMV did not say how long its investigation might take. Another DMV investigation, into whether Tesla falsely advertises its driver-assist technology as “Full Self-Driving,” has been ongoing for two years and three months.
The latest robotaxi incidents occurred on the heels of a controversial California Public Utilities Commission vote Aug. 10 to approve massive expansion of robotaxis in San Francisco.
State legislators are becoming fed up with the state of driverless vehicle regulation in California. A bill is moving through the Legislature that would require human safety drivers in driverless trucks for at least the next five years. State Sen. Lena Gonzalez has expressed concern about the way the DMV regulates Tesla safety.
DMV Director Steve Gordon, a former Silicon Valley executive, was appointed to the post by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Meantime, city officials in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Santa Monica and elsewhere are frustrated at how little control they have over robotaxi deployment in their cities.
The CPUC voted 3-1 to approve robotaxi expansion. The no vote was cast by Genevieve Shiroma, who said she was not against robotaxis but that it made sense to solve safety issues such as interference with emergency vehicles before expansion is approved.
Voting in favor of expansion was John Reynolds, whose previous job was that of top lawyer at Cruise.
All five members of the CPUC were appointed by Newsom. Newsom’s office declined to comment.
latimes/2023-08-12/cruise-robotaxis-come-to-a-standstill forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2023/08/17/cruise-robotaxi-drives-into-wet-concrete abc7news.cruise-driverless-car-sffd-fire-truck-accident theverge/2023/8/18/23837217/cruise-robotaxi-driverless-crash-fire-truck-san-francisco https://getcruise.com/news/blog/2023/further-update-on-emergency-vehicle-collision/ latimes.com/2022-05-26/dmv-tesla-year-long-slow-walk latimes/2023-06-01/driverless-trucks-california-dmv-mistrust-safety-regulations latimes.com/2023-08-10/cpuc-vote-on-robotaxi cpuc.ca.gov/about-cpuc/commissioner-john-reynolds
Jesus Christ. These events demonstrate that the vehicles are unable to handle unique situations. Is there any other conclusion you can draw except that they are not ready for the road? One of the cars failed to yield to an emergency vehicle and ended up colliding with it and injuring the passenger. They don’t handle road work sign instructions. These aren’t even uncommon scenarios.
How are they allowed to keep these things on the road? Their response to these events is the cut the fleet in half for a while. And the article implies that the city is to allow that. WTF. Shouldn’t the response be “your software is not ready. The taxis must be manned until you show that the vehicles can handle unique situations on the road”.
Edit: I don’t live in the area and haven’t been keeping up on the development of these taxis. My reaction is just based on the article. I’d truly be interested if anyone knows more about how how we ended up here or if the article is leaving out important details.
I think a lot of the problems here stem from people’s misunderstanding of the differences between these systems - mostly the people governing them.
Having ridden in all three, Tesla’s software is a fucking joke and shouldn’t be even remotely in the same field as the other two. Cruise feels borderline, but clearly they’re having severe issues. Waymo actually feels safer than most Uber drivers anyway.
You can’t just write general rules against all of these. Either you need different classes with clear distinctions, or you need standards/rules they have to pass.
But I find it extremely unlikely that our politicians can be bothered to actually learn the distinctions here.
Which Tesla stack did you use? If it was the old, pre-beta one, I agree that was trash, but the FSD beta is an insane improvement.
Funny thing is. Humans do all those things and more. Yet we can’t stop them driving. As long as driverless cars are better than the worse human drivers we have a win.
Plus I don’t want to sit in traffic. There will be deaths. Always are but there are more deaths due to incompetent drivers at the moment. It’s a tough line as humans will rightfully criticize a human for killing their love ones. Who takes blame when driverless kills us ?
Insurance needs adjusting and systems need adjusting.
Fails safes need to be in place and we the public need to be at the top of the pecking order. Cars should never drive into us.
Are these driverless cars better than human drivers? Looking at the article, I see 3 incidents in one week across 300 or less cars. I don’t know what the rate is for similar incidents in human drivers but it seems like it would be quite a bit lower of a rate.
How many driverless cars were on the road ?.on their first day. Yeah I think 3 isn’t too bad. How many deaths were there on that day. It’s not going to be perfect on day 1. Nothing is perfect out the gate. Decades of research
Are we talking about the same thing? Did you read the article? This is about cars deployed by the Cruise driverless car company. Base on the article it is 300 or less cars that caused 3 incidents in the course of 1 week.
Of course I did read a bit of the article b just couldn’t remember. I’m talking in general though. Lots of driverless cars kicking about
Ah. Gotcha. My points were specific to the taxi company and the rate of incidents for their vehicles, not driverless cars in general.
Oh no I get that but lots of these companies existed and roll have similar issues