Sat, August 19, 2023
:General Motors' Cruise autonomous vehicle unit has agreed to cut its fleet of San Francisco robotaxis in half as authorities investigate two recent crashes in the city.
The state Department of Motor Vehicles asked for the reduction after a Cruise vehicle without a human driver collided with an unspecified emergency vehicle on Thursday.
“The DMV is investigating recent concerning incidents involving Cruise vehicles in San Francisco,” the DMV said Saturday in a statement to The Associated Press. “Cruise has agreed to a 50% reduction and will have no more than 50 driverless vehicles in operation during the day and 150 driverless vehicles in operation at night.”
The development comes just over a week after California regulators allowed Cruise and Google spinoff Waymo to operate autonomous robotaxis throughout San Francisco at all hours, despite safety worries spurred by recurring problems with unexpected stops and other erratic behavior.
The decision Aug. 10 by the Public Utilities Commission made San Francisco the first major U.S. city with two fleets of driverless vehicles competing for passengers.
On Thursday around 10 p.m., the Cruise vehicle had a green light, entered an intersection, and was hit by the emergency vehicle responding to a call, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, based on tweets from Cruise.
The robotaxi was carrying a passenger, who was taken by ambulance to a hospital with injuries that were not severe, Cruise told the newspaper.
Also Thursday night, a Cruise car without a passenger collided with another vehicle in San Francisco, the newspaper reported.
The San Francisco Fire Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the newspaper.
The robotaxi almost immediately identified the emergency response vehicle as it came into view, Greg Dietrerich, Cruise's general manager in San Francisco, said in a statement on the company website.
At the intersection, visibility is occluded by buildings, and it's not possible to see objects around a corner until they are very close to the intersection, Dietrerich's statement said. The Cruise autonomous vehicle detected the siren as soon it was distinguishable from background noise, he wrote.
“The AV's ability to successfully chart the emergency vehicle's path was complicated by the fact that the emergency vehicle was in the oncoming lane of traffic, which it had moved into to bypass the red light,” Dietrerich wrote.
The Cruise vehicle identified the risk of a crash and braked, reducing its speed, but couldn't avoid the collision, he wrote.
Cruise vehicles have driven more than 3 million autonomous miles in the city and have interacted with emergency vehicles more than 168,000 times in the first seven months of this year alone, the statement said. “We realize that we'll always encounter challenging situations, which is why continuous improvement is central to our work.”
The company will work with regulators and city departments to reduce the likelihood of a crash happening again, Dietrerich wrote.
The DMV said the fleet reduction will remain until its investigation ends and Cruise takes corrective action to improve safety. “The DMV reserves the right, following investigation of the facts, to suspend or revoke testing and/or deployment permits if there is determined to be an unreasonable risk to public safety.”
The Associated Press
Self-driving car company Cruise agreed to reduce its driverless fleet by 50% after a spate of recent crashes. San Francisco officials previously pushed for a slower rollout of robotaxis.
Lloyd Lee
Sat, August 19, 2023
A passenger gets out of a Cruise driverless taxi after a test ride in San Francisco on February 15, 2023.Terry Chea/AP
California regulators recently approved 24/7 operation of driverless taxis in San Francisco.
Traffic jams and collisions followed within a week of the approval.
City officials previously told Insider the approval would be "premature."
Cruise, a self-driving car company, agreed to slash its driverless taxi operation in San Francisco by half on Friday following reports of two separate crashes involving its vehicles.
The California Department of Motor Vehicles said in a statement that it is investigating "recent concerning incidents involving Cruise vehicles" and that the company agreed to its request to reduce the number of operating vehicles by 50% with "no more than 50 driverless vehicles in operation during the day and 150 driverless vehicles in operation at night."
"Over one hundred people lose their lives every day on American roadways, and countless others are badly injured. We believe it's clear that Cruise positively impacts overall road safety, and look forward to working with the CA DMV to make any improvements and provide any data they need to reinforce the safety and efficiency of our fleet," a Cruise spokesperson told Insider in an email.
Cruise is cutting down its fleet just a week after the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) gave the company, along with Alphabet's Waymo, the green light to operate driverless taxis 24/7 in San Francisco.
CPUC Commissioner Darcie Houck indicated on the day of the approval that the commission could vote to limit the number of driverless vehicles or revoke the companies' permits entirely if there are more reports of incidents, The Verge reported.
The DMV also said it reserves the ability to suspend or revoke testing or deployment permits.
A day after the state regulators' approval, videos of several Cruise cars stalling in the middle of San Francisco's roads appeared online, with a buildup reportedly involving around 10 Cruise cars.
The company said SF's Outside Lands Music Festival "posed wireless bandwidth constraints causing delayed connectivity to our vehicles."
One Cruise vehicle also drove into wet concrete at a construction site.
On Thursday, two Cruise robotaxis were involved in separate collision incidents, one of which occurred while a passenger was inside the vehicle.
The Cruise taxi did not yield to the firetruck, injuring a passenger inside the car, a firefighter at the scene told CBS Bay Area.
Cruise said in a statement posted on X that its vehicle entered the intersection on a green light "and was struck by an emergency vehicle that appeared to be en route to an emergency scene."
In a separate statement, Cruise said that the buildings in that area make it difficult "for humans and AVs alike" to spot objects around the corner until they're close to the intersection.
The company added: "The AV's ability to successfully chart the emergency vehicle's path was complicated by the fact that the emergency vehicle was in the oncoming lane of traffic, which it had moved into to bypass the red light."
Another collision occurred that evening, in which another vehicle ran a red light "at a high rate of speed," the company told Insider.
"The AV detected the vehicle and braked but the other vehicle made contact with our AV. There were no passengers in our AV and the driver of the other vehicle was treated and released at the scene," a Cruise spokesperson said.
City officials and agencies previously raised concerns that San Francisco was not prepared to handle the expansion of driverless taxi operations.
Tilly Chang, executive director of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA), previously told Insider that her agency believes approving the permits would be "premature."
"We're not saying don't do anything … but there needs to be an incremental form of that expansion," she said.
Before the recent collisions, there had already been incident reports of Cruise cars causing traffic jams, interrupting emergency situations, and running into dogs.
Chang noted that local agencies know about these incidents only because they're "piecing it together ourselves" and that part of the issue they have stemmed from the lack of data.
"We've been asking for the companies to voluntarily or for the CPUC to require a log of incidents," she said.
Joe Castiglione, SFCTA's deputy director for technology, data, and analysis, told Insider that, based on the agency's data, there were about 90-plus incidents involving driverless cars by the end of 2022.
But in March — shortly after CPUC granted Cruise and Waymo permits to collect taxi fares during limited hours of the day — the number increased to about a hundred per month.
"One of the challenges is that there's very little data available to the public or to public agencies to understand what's happening on the street," Castiglione said.
Business Insider
Lloyd Lee
Sat, August 19, 2023
A passenger gets out of a Cruise driverless taxi after a test ride in San Francisco on February 15, 2023.Terry Chea/AP
California regulators recently approved 24/7 operation of driverless taxis in San Francisco.
Traffic jams and collisions followed within a week of the approval.
City officials previously told Insider the approval would be "premature."
Cruise, a self-driving car company, agreed to slash its driverless taxi operation in San Francisco by half on Friday following reports of two separate crashes involving its vehicles.
The California Department of Motor Vehicles said in a statement that it is investigating "recent concerning incidents involving Cruise vehicles" and that the company agreed to its request to reduce the number of operating vehicles by 50% with "no more than 50 driverless vehicles in operation during the day and 150 driverless vehicles in operation at night."
"Over one hundred people lose their lives every day on American roadways, and countless others are badly injured. We believe it's clear that Cruise positively impacts overall road safety, and look forward to working with the CA DMV to make any improvements and provide any data they need to reinforce the safety and efficiency of our fleet," a Cruise spokesperson told Insider in an email.
Cruise is cutting down its fleet just a week after the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) gave the company, along with Alphabet's Waymo, the green light to operate driverless taxis 24/7 in San Francisco.
CPUC Commissioner Darcie Houck indicated on the day of the approval that the commission could vote to limit the number of driverless vehicles or revoke the companies' permits entirely if there are more reports of incidents, The Verge reported.
The DMV also said it reserves the ability to suspend or revoke testing or deployment permits.
A day after the state regulators' approval, videos of several Cruise cars stalling in the middle of San Francisco's roads appeared online, with a buildup reportedly involving around 10 Cruise cars.
The company said SF's Outside Lands Music Festival "posed wireless bandwidth constraints causing delayed connectivity to our vehicles."
One Cruise vehicle also drove into wet concrete at a construction site.
On Thursday, two Cruise robotaxis were involved in separate collision incidents, one of which occurred while a passenger was inside the vehicle.
The Cruise taxi did not yield to the firetruck, injuring a passenger inside the car, a firefighter at the scene told CBS Bay Area.
Cruise said in a statement posted on X that its vehicle entered the intersection on a green light "and was struck by an emergency vehicle that appeared to be en route to an emergency scene."
In a separate statement, Cruise said that the buildings in that area make it difficult "for humans and AVs alike" to spot objects around the corner until they're close to the intersection.
The company added: "The AV's ability to successfully chart the emergency vehicle's path was complicated by the fact that the emergency vehicle was in the oncoming lane of traffic, which it had moved into to bypass the red light."
Another collision occurred that evening, in which another vehicle ran a red light "at a high rate of speed," the company told Insider.
"The AV detected the vehicle and braked but the other vehicle made contact with our AV. There were no passengers in our AV and the driver of the other vehicle was treated and released at the scene," a Cruise spokesperson said.
City officials and agencies previously raised concerns that San Francisco was not prepared to handle the expansion of driverless taxi operations.
Tilly Chang, executive director of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA), previously told Insider that her agency believes approving the permits would be "premature."
"We're not saying don't do anything … but there needs to be an incremental form of that expansion," she said.
Before the recent collisions, there had already been incident reports of Cruise cars causing traffic jams, interrupting emergency situations, and running into dogs.
Chang noted that local agencies know about these incidents only because they're "piecing it together ourselves" and that part of the issue they have stemmed from the lack of data.
"We've been asking for the companies to voluntarily or for the CPUC to require a log of incidents," she said.
Joe Castiglione, SFCTA's deputy director for technology, data, and analysis, told Insider that, based on the agency's data, there were about 90-plus incidents involving driverless cars by the end of 2022.
But in March — shortly after CPUC granted Cruise and Waymo permits to collect taxi fares during limited hours of the day — the number increased to about a hundred per month.
"One of the challenges is that there's very little data available to the public or to public agencies to understand what's happening on the street," Castiglione said.
Business Insider
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