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On one of my trips, this happened on a particularly tight, winding San Francisco street. As my Waymo and I negotiated with each other, we ended up blocking multiple cars, including a minivan whose driver started honking at us in frustration. Or maybe it's simply for people who would rather not interact with another human when they're in a taxi. Which is what David Margines, Waymo's director of product management, says is the service's chief appeal for customers right now. Like using it for food delivery — which is happening in Phoenix, via Uber Eats.
Cruise self-driving cars suspended in California over safety issues - NPR
Cruise self-driving cars suspended in California over safety issues.
Posted: Tue, 24 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Robotaxi testing and permits
Other backers include Finnish Industry Investment, Constructor Capital, Business Finland, the European Innovation Council and private investors. The Cruise system “inaccurately characterized the collision as a lateral collision and commanded the AV to attempt to pull over out of traffic, pulling the individual forward rather than remaining stationary,” the company said. Rescuers used the jaws of life to remove the vehicle and free the woman.
Cruise is now testing fully driverless cars in San Francisco
They tallied nearly 75 incidents where self-driving cars got in the way of rescue operations, including driving through yellow emergency tape, blocking firehouse driveways, running over fire hoses and refusing to move for first responders. "We thought that putting cones on these [driverless cars] was a funny image that could captivate people," says one organizer. "One of these self-driving cars with billions of dollars of venture capital investment money and R&D, just being disabled by a common traffic cone." Coning driverless cars fits in line with a long history of protests against the impact of the tech industry on San Francisco. Throughout the years, activists have blockaded Google's private commuter buses from picking up employees in the city. And when scooter companies flooded the sidewalks with electric scooters, people threw them into San Francisco Bay.
Promoting transportation priorities in SF
Cruise offers to pay $112K in fines over allegations it misled regulators about driverless car - NBC Bay Area
Cruise offers to pay $112K in fines over allegations it misled regulators about driverless car.
Posted: Wed, 07 Feb 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]
All it takes to render the technology-packed self-driving car inoperable is a traffic cone. If all goes according to plan, it will stay there, frozen, until someone comes and removes it. Last month, California regulators suspended Cruise’s license to operate in the state after a Cruise self-driving vehicle in San Francisco ran over a pedestrian who had been hit by another car and dragged her for 20 feet. Self-driving car company Cruise has suspended operations nationwide, including in Austin. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said the driver of a Ford Mustang Mach-E who crashed into a stationary car in Texas in February was using the hands-free driver-assistance system known as BlueCruise. This is the first known fatality resulting from a crash involving the use of BlueCruise.
When the automatic feature is selected and the ADAS is on, the vehicle will make automatic lane changes without driver input. As the car approached slower traffic, an arrow appeared on the instrument cluster (see photo), the system turned my indicator on and then made the lane change. This can be overridden by holding the steering wheel and keeping it in the lane. It was another wild week in the world of transportation, particularly in the EV startup and automated driving industries. The relaunch comes after the company ceased operations weeks after an Oct. 2 accident in which a pedestrian in San Francisco was dragged 20 feet by a Cruise robotaxi after being struck by a separate vehicle.
General Motors’ Cruise autonomous vehicle unit is recalling all 950 of its cars to update software after one of them dragged a pedestrian to the side of a San Francisco street in early October and a subsequent ban by California regulators. A lot of that is the claim of driverless cars being superhuman when it comes to safety, he says. Based on police reports and initial video footage from Cruise, the woman was first struck by a hit-and-run human driver whose vehicle threw her into the path of the driverless car.
GM’s Cruise robotaxis are back in Phoenix — but people are driving them
So, they started going out at night to "cone" as many cars as possible as a form of protest. An anonymous activist group called Safe Street Rebel is responsible for this so-called coning incident and dozens of others over the past few months. The group's goal is to incapacitate the driverless cars roaming San Francisco's streets as a protest against the city being used as a testing ground for this emerging technology. General Motors is slowing the expansion of its Cruise automated driving division and significantly cutting spending at the unit after suspending operations in response to growing safety concerns about its driverless cars. Initially, Cruise’s driverless autonomous offering will operate only between 10 p.m.
Cruise resumes manual driving as next step in return to driverless mission
Cruise has a strong history in Phoenix and it is home to a large number of Cruise employees. It’s a city that supports AV and transportation innovation, and Phoenix leaders strive to ensure the metro area is an incubator for advanced technology. We plan to expand this effort to other select cities as we continue to engage with officials and community leaders. Founded in 2013, Cruise makes self-driving cars that have the potential to save millions of lives, reshape our cities, give people more spare time, and restore freedom of movement for many. Waymo, which is owned by Google's parent company, Alphabet, has a couple hundred self-driving cars roaming around San Francisco, and access is still limited there via a waiting list, as well as by geography.
Suspension of operations
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. In October 2023, we paused operations of our fleet to focus on rebuilding trust with regulators and the communities we serve, and to redesign our approach to safety. We’ve made significant progress, guided by new company leadership, recommendations from third-party experts, and a focus on a close partnership with the communities in which our vehicles operate. We’re reintroducing a small fleet of manually-operated vehicles to begin mapping with trained safety drivers behind the wheel.
The service is starting out small and will build based on demand and performance metrics, a Waymo spokesperson told TechCrunch. Cruise said its "goal is to resume driverless operations," however it did not provide a timeline for doing so. It also did not announce a timetable for expanding human-driven vehicles to other cities. The redeployed vehicles will not operate as they previously did — as robotaxis — but will "create maps and gather road information in select cities, starting in Phoenix," the company said. The era of commercial autonomous robotaxi service is here — Cruise officially became the first company to offer fared rides to the general public in a major city as of late Wednesday. The milestone comes after Cruise received official approval from the California Public Utilities Commission in early June to operate driverless in a commercial capacity.
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. Asked whether remote operators are able to take control of the vehicle when needed, Ammann declined to answer. We partner with cities to provide services that support communities through driverless ridehail and delivery. Cruise said its car "braked aggressively to minimize the impact." It provided some news outlets with video of the incident, which ended right after the driverless car hit the woman.
"We're on a trajectory that most businesses dream of, which is exponential growth," Vogt said during a July call with investors. He boasted about the size of Cruise's driverless car fleet, adding that "you will see several times this scale within the next six months." "The software can make the autonomous vehicle behave as conservatively as possible because a safety violation would be very serious," Wan says. "But this may lead to concerns on the other side, like in some cases, even though it's safe it will fail to drive normally." Within the infotainment center, the driver can choose either “manual” or “automatic” lane change options.
The company had been planning to roll out a ride service in San Francisco and three other cities and begin testing Cruise vehicles on the streets of several other markets. It now plans to focus on only one city as it works to improve the operation of its fleet of driverless vehicles it has been testing. "In October 2023, we paused operations of our fleet to focus on rebuilding trust with regulators and the communities we serve, and to redesign our approach to safety," Cruise said in a blog post. Still, the company called the relaunched fleet with human drivers "a critical step for validating our self-driving systems as we work towards returning to our driverless mission." Last week, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation into Cruise citing pedestrian safety concerns.
Part of this, he says, is because the cars are programmed to be overly conservative. The company responded by pulling all its driverless vehicles off the roads, citing a need to regain public trust. General Motors' Cruise self-driving vehicle unit will redeploy cars on U.S. roadways Tuesday for the first time since October, beginning with a small fleet of human-driven vehicles in Phoenix, the company said.
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