Driver-less Taxis: What could go wrong?

We have to keep an eye on EssEff happenings since some can spill over into B'game.  It wouldn't surprise me if autonomous, robotic, driver-less taxis is one of them.  The Daily Post and Chronicle are reporting on the progress:

California regulators on Thursday issued a first-of-its-kind permit to robot-taxi company Cruise (a GM controlled company), which will make San Francisco the first major city in the country in which people can hail a paid ride from a driverless taxi, officials said.

The California Public Utilities Commission voted unanimously Thursday to grant Cruise its permit, more than six months after the San Francisco-based company first applied to be able to charge for rides in its autonomous vehicles, without a backup driver. The company has been offering free driverless rides since February and will begin rolling out paid rides in its 30 electric vehicles in the coming weeks, officials said.

That's the headline, but the caveats are far more interesting.  Since the taxis are apparently unable to move to the curb for pick-up and drop-off they are being restricted to less dense parts of the city.  They can only operate between 10pm and 6am and must stay under 30 mph and shut down for rain and fog.  A competitor, Waymo, has been offering service in the friendlier driving environs of Phoenix since October 2020, but driving in SF is a tougher task.

The Daily Post offered a reminder of two events last April when a Cruise taxi briefly blocked a fire truck responding to a call and when the SFPD stopped one of the taxis, it drove off before the officer finished ticketing it.  You can read the COO's statement about the new paid service here--and the link to hail one is at the bottom.  Be brave!  In the meantime, my old standby Luxor is still in business serving B'game and you get help with your bags.

Comments

[Paloma Ave]

Down goes Chester!

[MV]

Would be interesting to see an autonomous taxi or other AV drive down El Camino where the lane lines in the northbound direction have been wiped out by construction. Reminiscent of when Kramer adopted and doted on a highway by “widening” the lanes.

If you see an AV stopped on ECR, it’s trying to figure out what to do.

[Joe]

The ECR stripes are sort of like water - "you don't know the value of water until the well runs dry". I have noticed how much I miss the stripes and what is it--a 20 minute task?

Today's SF Examiner goes a bit deeper on Cruise driverless taxis. You know things are rough at the Comicle when the Examiner out-reports you with ease. Salient points:

--Cruise declares the taxis can pull over to the curb to load/unload. No explanation for the video showing they did do it in some instances. Cruise notes that it is actually legal for commercial vehicles to use a traffic lane to load/unload passengers. Sort of like how Amazon, UPS, etc just stop on ECR to deliver packages without getting a ticket.....

--Because there is no driver to sign a ticket, SF has directed the police to not issue traffic tickets to robotaxis. The CPUC who issued the permit sort of blew this off, but the DMV sort of punted the question but seems to think it has the authority to revoke a permit issued by the CPUC. Go figure. The rest of it including classic SF whining is here:

https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/are-cruises-self-driving-cars-ready-for-prime-time/article_25612cd4-e6b7-11ec-8884-77e9d39273be.html

[Joe]

Ruh-row. From today's WSJ:

California Regulator Looking Into Anonymous Letter Alleging Cruise’s Robotaxi Service Wasn’t Ready for Launch

A California regulator responsible for issuing driverless-car permits said it is looking into concerns raised in an anonymous letter that General Motors Co.’s Cruise LLC unit was preparing to launch its robotaxi service prematurely.

The California Public Utilities Commission said it had received an anonymous letter in mid-May from a person who said he had been working at the self-driving car company for a number of years.

In the letter, a copy of which was viewed by The Wall Street Journal, the person says that Cruise’s vehicles were regularly stalling at intersections and blocking lanes of traffic, and that employees had concerns internally about the readiness of the self-driving car company’s technology for commercial deployment.

The Journal hasn’t been able to independently verify the employment status of the letter’s author or the allegations raised by this person. Requests for comment sent to the email address listed on the letter weren’t returned.

In the letter, the person describes himself as a father and a Cruise employee for a number of years and asks that his comments remain private.

The letter also raises concerns about Cruise’s internal safety-reporting system, with the self-described employee citing one incident in which he filed a complaint that hadn’t been processed for six months.

The letter also claims that Cruise had regularly experienced incidents where vehicles stopped and were stranded individually or in clusters, blocking traffic. In some cases, the fallback systems designed to take control of the vehicle remotely failed, leaving Cruise employees unable to move the vehicles out of traffic until they were physically towed away, the person states in the letter.