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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.
Autonomous vehicles
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.
Watch: Driverless taxi torched by mob in San Francisco
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. 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. Now, we are building on that work to create high-quality semantic maps and gather road information to ensure future operations meet elevated safety and performance targets. Technological issues aside, what really put Cruise in hot water late last year was its response to the incident.
California allows robo-taxis to expand and emergency responders aren't happy
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.
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.
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.
G.M.’s Cruise Moved Fast in the Driverless Race. It Got Ugly.
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.
Self-driving car startup Cruise ran into trouble after pedestrian crash - NPR
Self-driving car startup Cruise ran into trouble after pedestrian crash.
Posted: Sat, 30 Dec 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]
You can't get a Waymo to pick you up at San Francisco International Airport, for instance, or take you across the Bay Bridge to Oakland. Over the next few weeks, Cruise continued to expand – launching driverless robotaxi rides in Houston. Then, in a surprise announcement at the end of October, the DMV ordered Cruise to immediately stop all operations in California.
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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.
Cruise's valuation halved after its driverless car hit and dragged a woman - The Register
Cruise's valuation halved after its driverless car hit and dragged a woman.
Posted: Mon, 04 Mar 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]
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.
"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."
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.
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