California pulls permits for Cruise's driverless cars over safety concerns Los Angeles Times

Table Of Content

• Driverless cars: What we've learned from experiments in San Francisco and Phoenix
• In San Francisco, the cars are driverless, the humans are baffled and future is uncertain
• A ‘cold-blooded killer’ called Smiley haunted L.A. for 14 years. How he finally faced justice
• Why Cruise is keeping half of its driverless fleet off the streets of SF
• Cruise starts testing fully driverless cars in San Francisco
• The invisible seafaring industry that keeps the internet afloat

Cruise was approved to test fully driverless cars (also called Level 4 in industry parlance) in California on October 15th. According to the DMV, Cruise can only test five driverless vehicles “on specified streets within San Francisco.” The vehicles are not allowed to exceed 30 mph, and can’t operate during heavy fog or heavy rain. 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. Next, we’ll validate our AV’s end-to-end performance against our rigorous safety and AV performance requirements through supervised autonomous driving on public roads, in addition to the ongoing simulation and closed course driving we do. During this phase, the Cruise vehicles will drive themselves and a safety driver is present behind the wheel to monitor and take over if needed.

Driverless cars: What we've learned from experiments in San Francisco and Phoenix

Just as the light turned green at a chaotic intersection in downtown San Francisco that October night, a pedestrian stepped into the road. A human-driven car rammed into the woman, causing her to roll onto the windshield for a few moments before she was flung into the path of the Cruise driverless car. We believe driverless technology has the potential to save lives, enhance access and improve communities. Other cities across the country with interest in driverless cars, are monitoring what is happening in San Francisco.

In San Francisco, the cars are driverless, the humans are baffled and future is uncertain

Cruise Says Hostility to Regulators Led to Grounding of Its Autonomous Cars - The New York Times

Cruise Says Hostility to Regulators Led to Grounding of Its Autonomous Cars.

Posted: Thu, 25 Jan 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]

It began with human safety drivers on board who were there to make sure everything ran smoothly. Cruise received permission to offer the public robotaxi rides last year, but it could only do so for free. The company, along with Waymo, was finally allowed to charge passengers this March, as long as they were rides with safety drivers behind the wheel. While Waymo can't charge for fully autonomous rides yet, it's still the only other company that's been granted a drivered deployment permit, based on CPUC's list. In August, the San Francisco Fire Department told state officials that its employees experienced at least 55 incidents with self-driving cars since the beginning of 2023, including a handful in which fire officials report the cars delayed emergency responders.

A ‘cold-blooded killer’ called Smiley haunted L.A. for 14 years. How he finally faced justice

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.

Why Cruise is keeping half of its driverless fleet off the streets of SF

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. 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.

"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.

Gil West, Cruise's chief operating officer, in a blog post hailed Thursday's vote as "a giant leap for our mission here at Cruise to save lives, help save the planet, and save people time and money." He said the company would begin rolling out its fared rides gradually. In an interview with The Post last month, Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt said the criticism of driverless cars and the incidents involving his company were overblown. Ed Walters, who teaches autonomous vehicle law at Georgetown University, said that driverless technology is critical for a future with fewer road fatalities because robots don’t drive drunk or get distracted. But, he said, this accident shows that Cruise was not “quite ready for testing” in such a dense urban area. The DMV said it met with Cruise the day after the crash but received additional footage 10 days later after “another government agency” told the DMV it existed.

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. Then several days later there was an accident involving a fire department truck, injuring one passenger in the Cruise. "It will warn you if there are cyclists or cars coming by. So, there is no chance of you actually opening the door and hitting somebody on the side. That's one example," explains Yemane.

California allows robo-taxis to expand and emergency responders aren't happy

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.

A Cruise AV, General Motor's autonomous electric Bolt EV is displayed in Detroit on Jan. 16, 2019. California regulators on Thursday gave Cruise's robotic taxi service the green light to begin charging passengers for driverless rides in San Francisco. Despite the bumps in the road, both Waymo and Cruise are rapidly expanding their robo-taxi programs throughout the U.S.

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.

Asked whether remote operators are able to take control of the vehicle when needed, Ammann declined to answer. Two people dressed in dark colors and wearing masks dart into a busy street on a hill in San Francisco. Right now, according to the company, 150 cars are scheduled to drive at night and only 50 vehicles will be on San Francisco streets during the day.

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. Self-driving car companies would argue that the more cars they have and the more complex their environments, the quicker they can learn to drive. This argument is premised on the idea that robot drivers are just like human drivers, but better.