Table Of Content
- Letters to the Editor: Automate everything? Driverless taxis mean more jobs taken from humans
- Woman hospitalized after a car hits her and a self-driving vehicle pins her in San Francisco
- Technology
- Cruise's service won't be allowed to operate in bad weather
- Previously, self-driving taxis had human drivers as back-ups
The vehicle then stopped but, according to Cruise, “attempted to pull over,” dragging the woman an additional 20 feet. Cruise says this sort of evasive maneuver was built into the vehicle’s software to promote safety, and is required by both California and federal regulators. Moving forward, Chiu, the San Francisco city attorney, said officials are still working on their request to appeal Waymo’s permits to operate their robotaxi service in the city. On Thursday, just two days after the California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended Cruise’s driverless permits, the company said it would suspend all driverless operations in the country to examine its process and earn back public trust. 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.
Letters to the Editor: Automate everything? Driverless taxis mean more jobs taken from humans
"Most of the problems they are facing is software related. It's a bug, it's a glitch, it's a very complicated software. But the AI is the core of this technology," he says. "(The companies) know the problems. The users, the public are reporting those kinds of problems. Now it is on the part of the company. They have to be fast and to solve those problems. Patch (that) software." Clashing with the state Legislature and California’s biggest cities over safety, the Newsom administration races ahead with driverless vehicle deployment. 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.
Woman hospitalized after a car hits her and a self-driving vehicle pins her in San Francisco
The company secured a driverless deployment permit from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) earlier this month, making it the first in the industry to do so. That allows Cruise to charge for rides with no safety driver behind the wheel, though its vehicles are limited to select streets in the city. In addition, the company's paid passenger service can only operate from 10PM to 6AM, and its cars can only drive at a max speed of 30 mph. 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.
Technology
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. California has suspended driverless vehicles operated by the General Motors subsidiary Cruise in the city of San Francisco—just two months after the state began allowing the robotaxis to pick up paying passengers around the clock. The suspension stems from a gruesome incident on October 2 in which a human-driven vehicle hit a female pedestrian and threw her into the path of a Cruise car. The driverless Cruise car hit her, stopped, and then tried to pull over, dragging her approximately 20 feet.
Driverless taxis are coming to the streets of San Francisco
After a period of testing with safety drivers, some cars are now fully driverless. First responders in San Francisco have also complained that the autonomous vehicles have repeatedly interfered with emergency vehicles and caused other incidents, especially after the state approved a massive expansion of the cars in August. In California alone, more than 40 companies — ranging from young start-ups to tech giants — have permits to test their self-driving cars in San Francisco, according to the DMV. According to a Washington Post analysis of the data, the companies collectively report millions of miles on public roads every year, along with hundreds of mostly minor accidents. We’re reintroducing a small fleet of manually-operated vehicles to begin mapping with trained safety drivers behind the wheel.
City leaders attempted to halt the expansion by highlighting these incidents, but were ultimately unsuccessful. "We need actual people behind the wheel with a pulse and a brain that know how to maneuver in sticky situations," San Francisco Supervisor Shamann Walton said at Tuesday rally protesting the driverless cars. "These Cruise vehicles are dangerous on our streets. When they see tragedy or see danger or there's an obstacle in their way, all they know how to do is freeze." During our operational pause over the last few months, Cruise maintained ongoing and extensive testing in complex, dynamic simulated environments and on closed courses, enabling continuous retraining and improvement.
As transport policy expert David Zipper has argued, most cities want to see fewer car trips overall, and more shared transit and physically active travel such as walking and cycling. While the companies learn to drive safely in complex environments, San Francisco and Phoenix are learning whether the technology is creating more problems than it promises to solve. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune.
Backseat Driving in Cruise, Waymo Robotaxis in San Francisco - Curbed
Backseat Driving in Cruise, Waymo Robotaxis in San Francisco.
Posted: Wed, 29 Nov 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Driverless cars can now operate like taxis in San Francisco, raising safety concerns
The suspension came after the DMV reviewed the Oct. 2 crash , in which a non-Cruise driver first struck a pedestrian, pushing the pedestrian into the path of a Cruise robotaxi. The Cruise vehicle ended up pinning and dragging the pedestrian, causing multiple traumatic injuries, officials said. "Many of the claimed benefits of (autonomous vehicles) have not been demonstrated, and some claims have little or no foundation," Ryan Russo, the director of the transportation department in Oakland, California, told the commission last month.
Previously, self-driving taxis had human drivers as back-ups
Safe Street Rebel isn't the only group that's had issues with the autonomous vehicles. 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. Over the past couple of years, driverless cars have become ubiquitous throughout San Francisco.
"It's a reminder that in this very high-tech world, the most low-tech things can literally put a wrench in the machine." 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. 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. "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.
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 move comes after one of Cruise's driverless cars struck a pedestrian in downtown San Francisco earlier this month. The incident involved a woman who was first hit by a human driver and then thrown onto the road in front of a Cruise vehicle. The Cruise vehicle braked but then continued to roll over the pedestrian, pulling her forward, then coming to a final stop on top of her. US states encouraged experimentation by dropping regulatory barriers, with cities, citizens and transport policymakers having little say.
No comments:
Post a Comment