Self-driving robotaxis in San Francisco have caused various problems, including impeding the fire department’s operations during fires and accidentally hitting a dog.
Now, a driverless Cruise robotaxi has become stuck in wet concrete, showing that the company still has a lot of work to do before their vehicles can safely operate alongside humans in cities. Luckily, there were no people inside the stuck vehicle when it became slathered on Golden Gate Avenue.
The car thinks it’s a road and it ain’t because it ain’t got a brain and it can’t tell that it’s freshly poured concrete; the irony of the kind of semantics being used by the likes of Cruise and its competitor Waymo to justify the existence of these driverless robotaxis — that they make fewer mistakes and are safer than humans. 🙂
The news is coming right after Cruise self-driving cars randomly stopped working all over the city, causing a huge traffic mess. Apparently, a nearby festival triggered the “wireless bandwidth constraints,” according to a Cruise spokesperson.
Unfortunately, it’s quite likely that we’ll be seeing a bunch more Cruise vehicles getting stuck. Just last week, California’s Public Utilities Commission voted three to one, giving the green light for Cruise and Waymo vehicles to operate their services “24/7.” This makes them the first big city in the US to do so.
Waymo told press that, even with all the craziness going on, they’ve got a whopping 100,000 people on their waitlist. They’re gonna let everyone in real soon.
Reference- SFGate Reports, Futurism, CNBC, HT Auto