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Meanwhile, in San Francisco, members of Safe Street Rebel continue to go out at night and stalk the vehicles one cone at a time. "It's a reminder that in this very high-tech world, the most low-tech things can literally put a wrench in the machine." "We don't really need traffic cones to show how vulnerable they are," says the Safe Street Rebel organizer.
We've heard about self-driving taxis forever, but they're just starting to become a reality
This work is done using human-driven vehicles without autonomous systems engaged, and is a critical step for validating our self-driving systems as we work towards returning to our driverless mission. This will help inform where we ultimately will resume driverless operations. The 2 October crash prompted Cruise to suspend driverless operations nationwide after California regulators found that its cars posed a danger to public safety. The state’s department of motor vehicles revoked the license for Cruise, which was transporting passengers without human drivers throughout San Francisco. Koopman says the safety narrative can unravel when people see the driverless cars on city streets making the same mistakes as human drivers. He says he'd like to see the companies focus on making sure the technology is actually safe.
The Cruise Safety Report: Advancing our safety mission through a transparent and holistic approach
But in certain circumstances such as a pedestrian positioned on the ground in the vehicle’s path, pulling over is not the desired response. In the crash, another vehicle with a person behind the wheel struck a pedestrian, sending the person into the path of a Cruise autonomous vehicle. But it then pulled to the right to get out of traffic, pulling the person about 20ft (six meters) forward. The pedestrian was pinned under one of the Cruise vehicle’s tires and was critically injured. The company said in documents posted by US safety regulators on Wednesday that with the updated software, Cruise vehicles will remain stationary should a similar incident occur in the future. 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.
Driverless by design
That prompted the city of San Francisco to file motions with the state demanding a halt to the expansion. 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. Neither Cruise nor Waymo responded to questions about why the cars can be disabled by traffic cones. Over the past couple of years, driverless cars have become ubiquitous throughout San Francisco.
Incidents
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. Cruise said it was reevaluating its operations and trying to earn public trust after it became the subject of a federal investigation for multiple incidents involving pedestrians in San Francisco. NHTSA opened an investigation on 16 October into four reports that Cruise vehicles may not exercise proper caution around pedestrians. The complaints involved vehicles operating autonomously and “encroaching on pedestrians present in or entering roadways, including pedestrian crosswalks in the proximity of the intended travel path of the vehicles”, the agency said. 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.
Why did Cruise pause operations?
Our goal is to earn trust and build partnerships with the communities such that, ultimately, we resume fully driverless operations in collaboration with a city. Safety is the defining principle for everything we do and will guide our progress through this process. 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.
Lyft and Uber said they will pause on their planned exit from Minneapolis after city officials decided to delay the start of a driver pay raise by a couple of months. Elon Musk’s decision to green-light a robotaxi over an affordable EV might cost the company its lead, TC reporter Tim De Chant writes. The company said in January that investigations or inquiries into the incident included those by the California DMV, the California Public Utilities Commission, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the U.S.
DOJ and SEC investigate GM-owned self-driving car company Cruise - The Washington Post
DOJ and SEC investigate GM-owned self-driving car company Cruise.
Posted: Thu, 25 Jan 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]
General Motors’ Cruise is redeploying robotaxis in Phoenix after nearly five months of paused operations, the company said in a blog post. California’s Department of Motor Vehicles last week accused Cruise of omitting the dragging of the woman from a video of the incident it initially provided to the agency. The D.M.V. said the company had “misrepresented” its technology and told Cruise to shut down its driverless car operations in the state. "To be clear, human drivers will text, they'll be distracted. There's the saying, 'the lights are on, but nobody's home,'" Koopman says. Meanwhile, The Intercept reported that Cruise cars had difficulty detecting children, according to internal documents. And The New York Times reported that remote human workers had to intervene to control Cruise's driverless vehicles every 2.5 to five miles.
Cruise (autonomous vehicle)
Members of Safe Street Rebel place a cone on a self-driving Cruise car in San Francisco. “As someone who has honestly dealt with Cruise cars myself … it never seemed like they were ready for prime time,” he said. What I really wanted to try was the advanced driver-assistance system, and specifically the automatic lane change feature, which I had yet to test.
We’re working to bring new transportation options that work for you and your community. While Waymo says it drives tens of thousands of trips a week, even the most tech-savvy people I talk to have yet to ride in one. In Phoenix, where Waymo first launched consumer access, it has about the same number of cars but no waiting list. Sometimes it's just a sense that the tech we all depend on may be harming us in ways we don't understand and can't control. That abnormal driving includes abrupt halts, swerves, erratic behavior or just stopping in the middle of the road.
They've tallied 55 incidents where self-driving cars have gotten in the way of rescue operations in just the past six months. 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.
"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. 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. “Everything from ‘I was a pedestrian, cyclist or in a car myself and a Cruise car almost hit me,’ to ‘a Cruise car has stopped in the middle of an intersection,’ or ‘several cars have stopped.' There was a fear."
Both former employees have filed lawsuits claiming the troubled EV company has been lying about some of the few sales it has announced to date. They also claim founder Jia Yueting has “weaponized” the EV startup’s HR department to retaliate against anyone who speaks up about these alleged misrepresentations. 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. They've run red lights, rear-ended a bus and blocked crosswalks and bike paths. "When there is an unreasonable risk to public safety, the DMV can immediately suspend or revoke permits," the DMV wrote in a statement.
It began with human safety drivers on board who were there to make sure everything ran smoothly. Cruise says in documents posted by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that it already has updated software in test vehicles that are being supervised by human safety drivers. The driverless fleet will get the new software before resuming operations, the company says.
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.
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