Table Of Content
From Castro Street to Clarion Alley, the streets are full of color in the Mission. Spend a few hours walking around this quirky neighborhood, and discover brightly painted murals and creative street art. Stumble into one of the local shops near Castro Theater for an afternoon espresso. San Francisco local Emma Becerra happened to catch the incident, and shared pictures of the emperiled vehicle on Twitter.
Robotaxis Can Now Work the Streets of San Francisco 24/7
An activist group called Safe Street Rebel has been cataloging the incidents, which now clock in at more than 500. The group figured out that if they put orange traffic cones on the hoods of driverless cars, they would render the vehicles immobile. So, they started going out at night to "cone" as many cars as possible as a form of protest. Both Cruise and Waymo say their vehicles are far safer than human drivers and compared to humans they've had relatively few incidents. They say they've driven millions of driverless miles without any human fatalities or life-threatening injuries.
Accessibility
That abnormal driving includes abrupt halts, swerves, erratic behavior or just stopping in the middle of the road. Members of Safe Street Rebel place a cone on a self-driving Cruise car in San Francisco. We’re working to bring new transportation options that work for you and your community.
Cruise’s Self-Driving Cars Keep Blocking Traffic in San Francisco
D.M.V. officials later learned through “discussion with another government agency” that the pedestrian had also been dragged, according to a suspension order sent to Cruise. Earlier this month, the California Public Utilities Commission voted 3-1 to let the two companies run their vehicles at all hours of the day picking up passengers like taxis. A driverless Cruise taxi with a passenger collided with a fire truck Thursday night, just one week after state officials allowed the service to expand. “In the coming weeks, we’ll begin charging fares for rider-only trips across the extensive SF service area where thousands of members of the public already ride with us—the first widely available round-the-clock AV service in the city,” a company spokesperson said. Cruise had previously given free access to some city riders and paid access to others, though it was unclear how the company decided who received the free rides.
Safety
The controversy delayed the vote by two months, as commissioners gathered more information from city officials and the robotaxi companies themselves. California today cleared all-day paid robotaxi service in San Francisco—with unlimited fleets of self-driving cars. Soon, anyone in the city might be able to hail a driverless car with a few taps of a phone. And San Francisco cab and ride-hail drivers will have new, automated competition. They're mostly run by Cruise, which is owned by GM, and Waymo, which is owned by Google parent company Alphabet. Both companies have poured billions of dollars into developing these autonomous vehicles.
Mary Roeloffs is a Forbes reporter who covers breaking news with a frequent focus on the entertainment industry, streaming, sports news, publishing, pop culture and climate change. She’s covered Netflix’s hottest documentaries, a surge of assaults reported on social media, the most popular books of the year and how climate change stands to impact the way we eat. Roeloffs was included on Editor & Publisher Magazine's “25 Under 30” list in 2023 and worked covering local news in the greater Boston area from 2017 to 2023. She graduated with a double major in political science and journalism from Northeastern University.
San Francisco, California
Its spokesperson told NPR that "safety is our mission and top priority" and that "we treat every event seriously by investigating it to understand what happened." Cruise says it gave regulators the entire video immediately after the incident. But the DMV says it was only after requesting the footage that Cruise handed it over – 10 days later. "When you start having passive aggressive protests like people putting orange cones on your cars, this isn't going to come out your way," says Cummings. Cruise has hired a law firm to investigate how it responded to regulators, as its cars sit idle and questions grow about its C.E.O.’s expansion plans.
San Francisco's police and fire departments have also said the cars aren't yet ready for public roads. They've tallied 55 incidents where self-driving cars have gotten in the way of rescue operations in just the past six months. In 2017, Cruise was conducting testing on public roads with Cruise AVs in San Francisco, Scottsdale, Arizona, and the metropolitan Detroit area. Despite public angst over autonomous vehicles, California state regulators voted to allow the companies to expand their robotaxi services in August. That prompted the city of San Francisco to file motions with the state demanding a halt to the expansion.
Activists in San Francisco demand governor shut down self-driving cars - NBC Bay Area
Activists in San Francisco demand governor shut down self-driving cars.
Posted: Mon, 19 Feb 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]
An Uber self-driving car, operating in full autonomous mode and with a safety driver in the vehicle, killed a pedestrian in Arizona in 2018. Over the past couple of years, driverless cars have become ubiquitous throughout San Francisco. It began with human safety drivers on board who were there to make sure everything ran smoothly.
Jump onboard a San Francisco cruise and head to Fisherman's Wharf to pick up a souvenir from one of the many gift shops in the tourist district. Cross the Golden Gate Bridge to the Marin Headlands for the best views of the famed bridge. End up at Battery Spencer Park and snap a photo of the landmark that looks good on any day. But Cruise's controversy still affects the self-driving industry overall, says Carnegie Mellon's Koopman. "Cruise is so solid even on narrow streets — the steering wheel has no jitter, totally smooth each block." "Another excellent @Cruise ride. From a hotel to a grocery store and back to the hotel - fully autonomously. If you think the future is not here yet, you’re just yet to try it. Long autonomy. P.S. Tweeting this from an AV."
To make streets safer, he said in an interview, cities should embrace self-driving cars like those designed by Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors. They do not get distracted, drowsy or drunk, he said, and being programmed to put safety first meant they could substantially reduce car-related fatalities. Majority owned by General Motors since 2016, Cruise combines a culture of innovative technology and safety with a history of manufacturing and automotive excellence. Cruise has received funding from other leading companies and investors—including Honda, Microsoft, T. Rowe Price, and Walmart. Driverless cars run by Cruise, which is owned by GM, and Waymo, which is owned by Alphabet, have been involved in numerous mishaps in the city over the past several months.
Cruise and Waymo already operate paid, driverless ride-hailing services in metropolitan Phoenix, where the Arizona state government has mostly opted out of regulating autonomous vehicle technology. But California’s reliable weather, populous cities, surplus of tech talent, and first-in-the-nation AV regulations dating back to 2012 make it an attractive challenge for self-driving-car developers. Its main rival, Google spinoff Waymo, has been testing its fully driverless vehicles in Phoenix for over a year, and recently announced it would be making its Level 4 taxi service available to more customers. The company had planned to launch a commercial taxi service in 2019 but failed to do so, and it has yet to publicly commit to a new date. Cruise was the fifth company to receive a driverless permit from the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles, the others being Waymo, Nuro, Zoox, and AutoX.
California regulators on Tuesday ordered Cruise, a General Motors subsidiary, to stop its driverless taxi service in San Francisco after a series of traffic mishaps, including one this month when a Cruise car dragged a pedestrian 20 feet after a crash. A lot of that is the claim of driverless cars being superhuman when it comes to safety, he says. On the night of October 2, one of Cruise's driverless cars struck a pedestrian in San Francisco leaving her critically injured and fighting for her life.
Garry Tan, who runs a venture capital fund, said people against the robotaxis “hate technologies” and several supporters stepped up at the Utilities Commission meeting to tout benefits like reducing drunk driving incidents and helping disabled people get around town. The incident had caused disruption to local traffic, and had forced a Muni bus to reroute around the blockage. After Thorn rang the assistance number displayed on the vehicle's display, a Cruise team arrived within 20 minutes to deal with the situation. The apparent need for a phone call raises questions as to Cruise's in-house monitoring capabilities. One would expect the highly-connected autonomous vehicles to send warnings directly back to Cruise HQ in the event of an unexpected stoppage.
The Cruise car ran over her, briefly stopped and then dragged her some 20 feet before pulling to the curb, causing severe injuries. Also today, the California Public Utilities Commission, which initially granted Cruise permission to carry passengers, suspended the company’s permits as it carries out its own investigation of the company, CPUC spokesperson Terrie Prosper wrote in an email. Passengers will not be able to ride in San Francisco until the permits are reinstated. In an initial meeting with Cruise after the October crash, the D.M.V. said, the company showed footage from the car’s cameras that ended with the driverless vehicle coming to a complete stop after hitting the pedestrian.
No comments:
Post a Comment