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

Table Of Content

• The GM-backed company is one of the first to launch Level 4 vehicles in a dense, complex urban setting
• Letters to the Editor: Automate everything? Driverless taxis mean more jobs taken from humans
• Self Driving Car
• Electric and hybrid vehicles could lose California carpool access. What you need to know
• Self-driving Waymo cars gather in a San Francisco neighborhood, confusing residents

We are committed to safely deploying our technology in close collaboration with officials and communities at every step. That’s how many times robotaxis have made unplanned stops on public streets in San Francisco since June of 2022. Professor Banafa says if San Francisco wants to be the leader in AI technologies, then it needs projects like driverless cars to showcase what can be done. The human driver of the vehicle that initially struck the woman has not been caught.

The GM-backed company is one of the first to launch Level 4 vehicles in a dense, complex urban setting

In San Francisco, city officials have no say over whether — or how — the cars are deployed on their streets. "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." "When there is an unreasonable risk to public safety, the DMV can immediately suspend or revoke permits," the DMV wrote in a statement.

Cruise driverless cars pulled off California roads after safety incidents - The Guardian US

Cruise driverless cars pulled off California roads after safety incidents.

Posted: Wed, 25 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Letters to the Editor: Automate everything? Driverless taxis mean more jobs taken from humans

It previously said that it will roll out fared rides gradually, and it reiterated that plan in its latest announcement, where it noted that it's "inviting more people" into its driverless vehicles every week. The goal is to eventually be able to offer fared rides all day across the entire city. Citing public safety concerns about Cruise‘s robotaxi line operating in San Francisco, California DMV officials announced Tuesday that the agency had suspended permits for the driverless cars deployed by General Motors’ autonomous vehicle subsidiary. California regulators on Thursday gave a robotic taxi service the green light to begin charging passengers for driverless rides in San Francisco, a first in a state where dozens of companies have been trying to train vehicles to steer themselves on increasingly congested roads.

Self Driving Car

Residents of San Francisco and Phoenix have grown used to witnessing something that, a decade ago, would have seemed magical. In some parts of these cities, at certain times, cars drive by with nobody behind the wheel. 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. 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.

We advised on safety, data-sharing, transparency and ensuring that the benefits are evenly spread. In the 21st century, many cities were spooked by the rapid disruptions wrought by ride-hail companies such as Uber and Lyft. In the last year, Cruise cars have been involved in a number of incidents that, while not directly life-threatening, were really annoying for a city trying to go about its business.

Electric and hybrid vehicles could lose California carpool access. What you need to know

The vehicles have not been blamed for any serious crashes or deaths, but do present a number of problems that don’t impact human drivers. There have been multiple reports of cars shutting down and refusing to move when they encountered an unexpected problem like downed wires or dense fog. The suspensions mark a serious setback for the driverless vehicle industry, which has faced charges of under-regulation even as Cruise and others plan to expand to new cities across the US. Cruise is still permitted to operate robotaxis in San Francisco with a human safety driver behind the wheel—which is how the company initially began to test self-driving cars in the city. GM's Cruise has started charging passengers for fully driverless rides in San Francisco.

L.A. teen’s death caused by fall down stairs, not school fight, autopsy report finds

Also today, the California Public Utilities Commission, which initially granted Cruise permission to carry passengers, suspended the company’s permits as it carries out its own investigation of the company, CPUC spokesperson Terrie Prosper wrote in an email. Passengers will not be able to ride in San Francisco until the permits are reinstated. This is just one example of how difficult it is to get an accurate picture of the performance of driverless cars.

Cruise spokesperson Navideh Forghani says Cruise has stayed in close contact with regulators but disputed the DMV’s timeline. She says the agency was shown video of the entire incident, including the pull-over, the day after the crash. The DMV says Cruise will either have to appeal its decision or provide information about how it has addressed its technology’s “deficiencies” in order to win back its permit. While Cruise's application for a driverless taxi service in San Francisco won widespread backing from supporters hoping the technology will become viable in other cities, some transportation experts urged the Public Utilities Commission to move cautiously. That approval was a pivotal moment for the self-driving car industry, as it expanded one of the biggest test cases in the world for the technology. Ziwen Wan, a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at University of California, Irvine, has studied why driverless cars may be acting this way.

At this stage, no autonomous systems are engaged and the vehicles will not carry public passengers. Uber wound up selling its autonomous driving division to Aurora in 2020 and still relies almost exclusively on human drivers who have been more difficult to recruit since the pandemic. But now Cruise has been cleared to charge for rides in vehicles that will have no other people in them besides the passengers — an ambition that a wide variety of technology companies and traditional automakers have been pursuing for more than a decade. The driverless vehicles have been hailed as a way to make taxi rides less expensive while reducing the traffic accidents and deaths caused by reckless human drivers.

Cruise downfall in SF defined 2023 for autonomous-vehicles Transit sfexaminer.com - San Francisco Examiner

Cruise downfall in SF defined 2023 for autonomous-vehicles Transit sfexaminer.com.

Posted: Sun, 24 Dec 2023 23:18:58 GMT [source]

In one incident, worried fire personnel broke the windows of a Cruise vehicle in an attempt to prevent it from driving onto an active fire scene. Cruise said earlier this month that it has improved the way its technology responds to emergency vehicles and situations. 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.

Throughout the city, small groups took pictures at intersections and stop signs to admire driverless cars, which are now able to operate 24/7 picking up paying passengers. “The AV [autonomous vehicle] braked aggressively before impact and because it detected a collision, it attempted to pull over to avoid further safety issues,” Forghani said. “When the AV tried to pull over, it continued before coming to a final stop, pulling the pedestrian forward. Our thoughts continue to be with the victim as we hope for a rapid and complete recovery.

This month it sent out one car at night in San Francisco's rather sleepy Sunset District on the far west side of the city next to the Pacific Ocean. Jeff Brink, who also lives in San Francico, was giving his Michigan relatives a tour of the city when they saw a driverless car near Union Square. He has seen driverless cars being tested over the past few years, and says he is ready for his turn. This month, one of Cruise’s top competitors, Waymo — owned by Alphabet, Google’s parent company — expanded its driverless vehicles into Los Angeles amid growing concern.

We’re working to bring new transportation options that work for you and your community. 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. Waymo says it has a permit for 250 cars and it deploys about 100 at any given time. The Department of Motor Vehicles made Cruise cut that number in half after one of its cars collided with a firetruck last week. As self-driving cars expand to more places, the social learning that happens around them will be just as important as the machine learning that drives their computers. The experiment is taking place in public, so we must ensure that its lessons are not kept private.