GM’s Cruise AVs Blocking San Francisco Traffic Again
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GM’s autonomous driving subsidiary, Cruise, began offering customers free rides in its Chevy Bolt EV-based autonomous vehicles late last year and received a permit to begin charging these passengers for its services in early 2023. Since then, Cruise AVs have clocked more than 250,000 driverless miles on the streets of San Francisco, but the going hasn’t been without a few mishaps, including an accident with injuries and reports of the vehicles stopping in traffic. Now, Cruise AVs reportedly blocked traffic in San Francisco once again.
According to SFGate, several Cruise AVs roadblocked traffic on Monday, September 26th, 2022. Two vehicles were captured on video sitting in a bus lane, preventing the flow of traffic near the intersection of Sacramento and Leavenworth streets. Their hazards were flashing, while a Muni bus was unable to pass them, stopped further back.
In a separate incident, another Cruise autonomous vehicle stopped in a Muni bus lane, almost causing a collision, which the bus driver was able to avoid. The Bolt EV, meanwhile, simply stopped with its hazard lights on, playing music through its radio, but with no passengers present.
Cruise spokesperson Drew Pusateri explained that the three AVs halted due to a “technical issue,” which could mean that the vehicle encountered a situation in which it could not safely proceed and instead came to a halt and activated its hazard lights. A team from Cruise was dispatched to each incident, arriving within 20 minutes to clear its AVs away from the scene.
“Safety is the guiding principle of everything we do,” Pusateri said. “That means if our cars encounter a situation where they aren’t able to safely proceed, they stop and turn on their hazard lights, and we either get them operating again or pick them up as quickly as possible. This could be because of a mechanical issue like a flat tire, a road condition, or a technical problem. We’re working to minimize how often this happens, and apologize to anyone impacted.”
No injuries or collisions were reported in the aforementioned incidents, although it seems to indicate that more development might be needed in order to safely deploy these autonomous vehicles. However, a recent study suggests that “true”, fully-fledged autonomy may never be achieved, and that AVs like those in Cruise’s fleet will need human supervision in order to function.
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Pull these damn things off the street NOW
So you gotta wait till the pro’s from Cruise show up to move them out of the way? What nonsense this is. If the damn things weren’t so heavy I’d say let a police cruiser utilize their push bars to nudge them off the road and then charge Cruise for their “services”. Aint no way I’d ever get into a driverless vehicle on public roads.
Ha so predictable! This was predicted years back well before they deployed these things on the road. So much effort for a technology nobody is asking for. So wasteful
Outlaw these dangerous menaces! Or just keep them all in CA!
These, ladies and gentlemen, are the people who would have never left their horse and buggy.
Nope these are the people that actually know how electronics and sensors work in the real world. This is not progress its putting people in harms way for a technology that is nowhere near ready for primetime if ever!
And this is a person who believes anything corporations and tge media tells them.
Yeah, like there is no inflation.
And they want to remove the steering wheel and pedals. When these break down how will they be removed from the road without them?
The last time I had a vehicle break down, the tow truck operator had to interact with the steering wheel to properly position the wheels to pull the vehicle up onto the flat bed.
Moron’s and their grandiose ideas that ignore common sense.
How stupid is this?! It is a complete waste of time and resources, just technology in search of a problem!
Are these people too lazy or inept to drive themselves?
I think it is par for the course to what is going on in this country- be dependent on the government and technology to live and make decisions.
Yup, these are the people that defer to the Government. They believe the Government knows what’s best for themselves.
I bet you the exact same comments were being made when the first cars came out to replace horses. Thank God we didn’t listen to the naysayers back then, otherwise we would still be riding horses to get to work today…
At least the horse would move and not stop in the middle of the street…..
The horse would have more intelligence and common sense than the entire team creating these stupid vehicles!
Strap Mary in an autonomous race car and race Pikes Peak. After 100 straight successful runs, I might be interested in continuing the program.
As someone said in a past note, this is one of Barra’s dream chasing Unicorns!
It was reported that Cruise lost $350M USD (or wasted) in the 2nd Quarter of 2022.
Use that money to get more chips and parts for the unfinished vehicles.
Wow, who knew that there were so many Uber drivers reading this newsletter and worried about their jobs?
I’m with you, I’m totally against the moon program and wasting that money on research, I mean what did it get us? Okay maybe it led to the he development of micro processors and advanced computers, the internet, flat screen tv’s, cell phones and a few other innovations but damn, it led to the loss of lives for the Space Program, stop it now before more astronauts lose their lives.
And we should have stopped microbiology development right when Louis Pasteur started it. How many lives were lost because we didn’t develop vaccines fast enough! If everyone caught and experienced anthrax, rabies, even Covid for crying out we would naturally develop immunities and the survivors wouldn’t have to worry about the sicknesses.
Gm lost $350 million developing autonomous vehicles. Think of what they could have done with that money! I’m all for not spending it on research and giving the investors a higher return on their investments!!