Cruise – General Motors’ self-driving robotaxi service – has been involved in a few incidents lately as the autonomous driving subsidiary continues to work out the kinks in the autonomous-driving technology. Recently, another Cruise AV unit was captured in a peculiar predicament.
In a video posted to social media, we find a Cruise AV unit stuck in the middle of an intersection that’s undergoing construction. Seemingly confused by the road work, the robotaxi doesn’t budge as a flagger waves his sign in front of the vehicle in an attempt to discourage it from moving forward.
Of course, although this incident was likely extremely irritating for the flagger and other workers, the Cruise AV unit thankfully stopped and didn’t crash through the worksite.
As previously mentioned, this recent incident isn’t an isolated event. Cruise was forced to recall 300 Cruise AV units following a San Francisco crash back in March 2023. More specifically, the robotaxi service claims that while the self-driving technology was able to distinguish the front and rear of the bus, the length of the city bus fooled the Cruise AV unit into miscalculating how much room it had to maneuver.
Cruise stuck in the Middle of the road in SF. pic.twitter.com/0XOcfC3Q2M
— Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) June 4, 2023
In other Cruise-related news, the self-driving subsidiary recently reached the 2 million driverless miles milestone. This development comes as Cruise surpassed 1.5 million driverless miles just the month before, indicating that the popularity of the robotaxi service is increasing exponentially.
In addition, Cruise is now available for riders who are 13 years or older. As long as said minor is accompanied by an adult – because minors can’t create their own Cruise accounts – they are now able to participate in the all-electric ride-sharing service.
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Comments
Cruise utilizes high res maps and geo fencing to function properly in small defined areas. As soon as a change (construction, etc.) is introduced it can’t function. This demonstrates one of the many limitations of this strategy vs AI learning.
Cruise utilizes both. A tesla just would disengage FSD, hence the problem with full autonomous vehicles regardless of who makes it. The never ending edge case scenario. They are all 99% there but the remaining one percent is in some ways unachievable. A human could for example ask that guy where to go, get out of car and see, etc. I don’t doubt we can get full autonomy in a close system like a divided highway soon but city streets at scale seems still far off.
The front loader in picture should have crushed it. Article doesn’t explain how the situation was resolved?
This thing should have been impounded immediately.
And Mary should have been forced to get it out of impound personally.
AGAIN, this technology should be outlawed on public roads, if is a menace. We start ones already questioned what the robot car would do when it encountered a detour, an accident, a flagged, a traffic cop, an obstruction, and etc.
What if you were a passenger in that car and were needing to be somewhere at a certain time? Can’t ask the driver to find another way. Is there a “help” button somewhere in the car to call for assistance or do you just sit there until dispatch realizes one of their cars hasn’t moved in 3 hours?
If those things ever become self-aware, that’s when the killing begins.
They should give it a covid vaccine and a mask that way it will fall in line and obey:)
Just trying to Find New Roads.