SF News Another Waymo Decided to Park In the Middle of an Intersection, Blocking Muni Bus You've heard a lot of these stories by now, but we have yet another situation in which a robocar disrupted civil society in San Francisco and caused actual humans to have trouble getting where they need to go.
SF News SF Fire Chief Fumes Over Self-Driving Robotaxis Blocking First Responders Dozens of Times This Year San Francisco Fire Department Chief Jeanine Nicholson notes there have been 39 incidents of Cruise and Waymo robotaxis blocking first responders this year alone, and says the robot cars are “not ready for prime time.”
Business & Tech GM Recalled 300 Cruise Robocars Following Crash Into Muni Bus An incident in which a Cruise robotaxi made a booboo and "tapped" the back of a Muni bus in the Haight last month has prompted General Motors to do a "recall" — which in the days of internet-connected vehicles just amounted to a software update.
Business & Tech San Francisco Could Soon Become a Free-for-All of Self-Driving Taxis You may already think there are too many self-driving robocars on the streets of SF, roaming creepily around with names like "Mocha" and "Juice." But the cars are actually pretty restricted in what they can do and where they can go right now. That may soon change.
Business & Tech Self-Driving Waymo Drives Self Into Construction Site, Doesn’t Know What To Do The latest San Francisco driverless car mishap involves an autonomous Waymo vehicle driving upon a construction site, stopping in front of a trench in the ground, then having no idea what to do as construction workers have a good laugh at the robot car’s confused state.
Business & Tech Tesla In Self-Driving Mode Blamed For Eight-Car Pileup On Bay Bridge We are now learning that a Thanksgiving Day multi-car crash that injured nine people is being blamed on a Tesla in “full self-driving” mode, as the Tesla reportedly came to an abrupt stop after a lane change, causing a chain-reaction pileup in the Yerba Buena tunnel.
Business & Tech Now the Feds Are Looking Into Why All Those Cruise Robotaxis Went Rogue and Swarmed on Gough Street GM's self-driving taxi arm Cruise will have to answer to federal safety regulators who are now rightfully concerned about several incidents in which the robot cars decided to stop in the middle of streets and block human drivers from getting past, or randomly brake quickly and cause collisions.
SF News Waymo Can Now Offer Driverless Taxi Rides In SF (But Can't Charge for Them) Joining the likes of General Motors-owned Cruise, Waymo — the Alphabet-owned autonomous car company — is now permitted to give fully self-driven rides in San Francisco after months of testing with drivers behind the wheel.
Business & Tech GM Cruise Robotaxis Blocked SF Streets More Frequently Than We Knew, One Night ‘Nearly 60’ Cars Stopped GM Cruise snafus have blocked SF streets with suddenly immobilized self-driving cars at least three times in the last two months, with one incident where almost 60 vehicles stopped, and another where Cruise “lost touch with its entire fleet.”
Business & Tech Jokes and Some Outrage Drive Themselves on Twitter In Wake of Driverless Cruise Cab Pulled Over by Cops It has been a long, inevitable road to get to the point where even law enforcement is visibly flummoxed on what to do with an AV that isn't following the rules of the road.
Business & Tech Video: SF Cops Try to Pull Over Driverless Cruise Taxi, Hilarity Ensues All haters of the ersatz training course for robot cars that San Francisco's streets have become are having a field day with a new video, posted earlier this month, showing an autonomous Cruise taxi in the Richmond District getting pulled over by the SFPD with no driver inside.
Business & Tech State Grants First Permits to Waymo and Cruise For Paid Self-Driving Taxi Service The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has granted its first, semi-full permits to Alphabet-owned Waymo and General Motors-owned Cruise to provide autonomous-vehicle taxi service to paid passengers.
Business & Tech Free Rides In Self-Driving Cruise Taxis Now Available in SF (But You Have to Get On a Waitlist) If you’re sick of looking at those self-driving cars with droids on top of them, now you can get into one and get a free ride instead — but the program seems unlikely to start for weeks or even months.
Business & Tech Waymo Is Suing the California DMV to Keep Its Crash Data Secret Alphabet's self-driving car arm is running up against a roadblock in its path to becoming a fully-fledged autonomous taxi service in California, and that is coming in the form of a legal battle over its crash data.
Business & Tech Tesla Self-Driving Called Out in Full-Page NYT Ad, Which Claims ‘Millions Would Die Every Day’ if Universally Adopted A full-page ad in Sunday’s New York Times declares “We did not sign up our families to be crash test dummies for thousands of Tesla cars,” but the ad is affiliated with a rival self-driving software company.
Business & Tech Waymo Car Hits Pedestrian in Lower Haight, Company Claims a Person Was Driving at the Time One of those omnipresent, sensor-topped Waymo vehicles collided with a pedestrian late Wednesday night, but the company insists the vehicle was not in self-driving robot mode at the time of the accident.
Business & Tech If You Would Like to Hail a Robo-car in San Francisco You Can Do That Now With Waymo Google's self-driving car spinoff Waymo has just launched its autonomous vehicle ride-hailing service Waymo One in San Francisco, with a view toward getting rid of the "safety driver" altogether and letting the robo-cars do all the work.
Business & Tech Uber’s Self-Driving Volvos Resumed Testing in San Francisco Today They’re only in the Richmond District, with a human safety driver onboard, but the Uber self-driving cars are back in town starting today.
Business & Tech Uber Gets Back in the California DMV's Good Graces With New Self-Driving Car Permit A little over three years after it unleashed some self-driving cars in San Francisco without any legal permit to do so, Uber has just been granted a new permit to test the autonomous vehicles on California streets.
SF News Lyft To Offer Free Rides In Self-Driving Cars Later This Year In SF The supposedly kinder, gentler, and self-described “woke” rideshare service Lyft has been feasting on the entrails of scandal-ravaged competitor Uber as of late. But a new self-driving car announcement from Lyft today signifies
SF News Report: Self-Driving Cars Are Hilariously Easy To Fool Hell hath no fury like tech bros being told that their self-driving cars, artificial intelligence, and machine-learning technologies are overhyped and nowhere near ready for market. But with that in mind, SFist will
SF News Uber Exec Accused Of Stealing Google Self-Driving Car Secrets Pleads Fifth Over Criminal Charges Concerns Anthony Levandowski, an Uber executive whom CEO Travis Kalanick once called his "brother from another mother," is asserting his Fifth Amendment rights in a lawsuit filed by his former employer, Google. Levandowski's lawyers
SF News Google Asking Judge To Keep Uber's Autonomous Cars Off The Road The latest salvo in what could be a very long and drawn out battle between Alphabet-owned self-driving car startup Waymo and Uber comes in a court filing formally asking a federal judge to
SF News Nation's First Driverless Shuttles Begin Ferrying Workers Around Bay Area Office Park On Monday, two autonomous passenger shuttles built by the French company EasyMile began picking up passengers to move them around the Bishop Ranch office park in San Ramon, 35 miles east of San
SF News Oh, So NOW Uber Wants DMV Permits For Self-Driving Car Tests In CA Two months after deploying self-driving cars to pick up customers in San Francisco with disregard that bordered on contempt for DMV permits, the company is abruptly hitting reverse. The San Jose Mercury News
