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San Francisco officials person called for a slower, much considered enlargement of the usage of autonomous vehicles, which person blocked postulation and hampered exigency services
Technology 31 January 2023Cruise is offering escaped rides successful its driverless cars to non-employees successful San Francisco David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Officials successful San Francisco person asked for a halt to the enlargement of driverless car tests crossed the metropolis aft a bid of incidents that person hampered the enactment of exigency services.
San Francisco’s presumption astatine the bosom of Silicon Valley and its wealthiness of exertion endowment has made it a hotbed for the driverless car industry. Both Waymo, owned by Google’s genitor institution Alphabet, and Cruise, owned by General Motors, run experimental robotic taxi services successful the city. But they haven’t been without problems.
New Scientist has antecedently reported however autonomous vehicles (AV) from Cruise, for example, person randomly stopped and blocked traffic and had a run-in with police. But details of different incidents with driverless cars person present emerged successful letters from metropolis officials.
The San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA) has written to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) saying that managers successful the City’s Department of Emergency Management began to announcement a fig of 911 calls past twelvemonth from radical who had seen specified cars halt without crushed and artifact traffic, arsenic good arsenic “erratic driving”, specified arsenic indicating successful 1 absorption and moving successful the other.
These unexpected stops connected engaged streets scope from minutes to hours, says 1 of the letters, giving an illustration of a Cruise car that reportedly stopped and blocked a San Francisco Fire Department conveyance connected its mode to a fire. In different incident, a Cruise car entered an country wherever firefighters were moving and astir ran implicit their hoses – it lone stopped erstwhile firefighters shattered the beforehand model of the vehicle.
Both Cruise and Waymo presently run tiny fleets betwixt the hours of 10pm and 6am successful a confined country of San Francisco, but each has applied for support to dispersed further crossed the metropolis and run much cars 24 hours a day.
The SFCTA has present written abstracted letters to the CPUC astir some Cruise’s and Waymo’s enlargement plans and called for “restraint… alternatively than accelerated expansion”.
“Cruise AVs person made unplanned and unexpected stops successful question lanes wherever they obstruct postulation and transit service, and intruding into progressive exigency effect scenes,” says the missive astir Cruise. “If the Commission approves sweeping authorizations for some Waymo and Cruise, the hazards and web impacts… could soon impact a ample percent of each San Francisco travelers.”
Neither Cruise nor Waymo responded to a petition for remark by New Scientist. However, successful a statement, Cruise has emphasised that its information grounds “includes having driven millions of miles successful an highly analyzable municipality situation with zero life-threatening injuries oregon fatalities”. A Waymo spokesperson has said that the letters aere “a modular portion of the regulatory process” and the institution would proceed its “healthy dialogue” with metropolis officials.
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