For some residents of San Francisco, the future of robotic driving is just a tap away. Car service from GM Cruise subsidiary and Alphabet company road allow them to summon a Driverless ride with an app. But some riders may have become too comfortable with the technology.
In a letter to the California regulator yesterday, city agencies complained that on three separate occasions since December, Cruise employees called 911 after a passenger on one of the Their driverless vehicles became “unresponsive” with two-way voice links installed in each vehicle. Each time, police and firefighters rushed to the scene but discovered the same thing: a passenger dozing off on their robotic ride.
Letters from agencies complain that incidents have wasted public money and potentially diverted resources from those in need. “Taxpayer-funded emergency response resources used for non-emergencies literally undermine their ability to provide for members of the public.[d],” wrote the City of San Francisco Transportation Authority, San Francisco County Transportation Authority, and the Mayor’s Office on Disabilities.
The letter is one in a series of letters sent to the California Public Utilities Commission this week by transportation officials in San Francisco and Los Angeles seeking to stifle requests by Cruise and Waymo to expand their paid robotic taxi services in both cities. Cities say they worry the technology isn’t ready. And they want companies to be required to share more data about cars’ performance and meet specific standards before services can be extended.
San Francisco authorities cite a number of disturbing and previously unreported incidents, including false alarms about drivers falling asleep and two incidents in which Cruise’s self-driving vehicles appeared to have failed. hinder firefighters from doing their job.
One incident occurred last June, days after the state allowed Cruise to pick up paying passengers in the city. The agency’s letter states that one of the company’s robotic trailers ran over a fire hydrant being used at the scene of the fire, an act that “could cause serious injury to firefighters.” fire.”
In a second incident, just last week, the city said firefighters battling a major fire in the Western Addition neighborhood saw an approaching driverless Cruise vehicle. The San Francisco agencies wrote in their letter: “They made every effort to prevent Cruise AV from driving through their hose and were unable to do so until they broke the Cruise AV’s front window.”
A spokesman for the San Francisco Fire Department, Jonathan Baxter, confirmed that two incidents occurred. He said that on the most recent one, the self-driving car took about two minutes to stop and that the department contacted Cruise about both encounters with firefighters. Cruise spokeswoman Hannah Lindow said the vehicle was stationary at the time firefighters broke the glass. WIRED previous report that a Cruise vehicle blocked one of the department’s fire trucks en route to a major fire for about 25 seconds last spring.
Lindow said that some of the data Cruise provides to regulators must be kept private for the safety of customers and to protect “proprietary information.” She wrote in a statement that the company had “traveled millions of miles in an extremely complex urban environment with no life-threatening injuries or deaths.”
