SF Politics Friday’s North Beach Self-Driving Car Clusterf*** Has SF Officials Begging the State to Walk Back Approval Barely 24 hours after getting state approval to run their self-driving cars at all hours in SF, Cruise robotaxis froze up en masse in North Beach Friday night. Now SF City Hall is urging a state commission to go into reverse on that approval.
Business & Tech State Commission Votes to Approve Autonomous Taxi Expansion In San Francisco In Historic Vote The California Public Utilities Commission voted 3-1 on Thursday night, after over seven hours of public comment, to approve the expansion of robotaxi service in San Francisco to 24 hours — and approved both Cruise and Waymo to take paid fares at all hours.
Business & Tech Over 200 Members of the Public Set to Give Comment at PUC Hearing on Robotaxis The hearing on expanding autonomous-vehicle taxi service in San Francisco has gotten underway at the California Public Utilities Commission — and a long line of attendees and possible speakers during the public-comment portion was visible at Van Ness and McAllister on Thursday morning.
Business & Tech One Autonomous Vehicle Appeared to Chase a Fire Truck; Another Blocked a Fire Truck From Getting Out of Its Station On the eve of a key vote by a state commission on whether to allow Cruise and Waymo to further expand their autonomous vehicle testing and begin taking paid passengers all over SF, we're getting to see some of the 55 incident reports filed by the SF Fire Department involving AVs.
SF News Cops, Firefighters, and of Course Taxi Drivers Tee Off on Self-Driving Robotaxis Before Key Regulatory Vote Firefighters complain “it is not our job to babysit their vehicles” as Cruise and Waymo road glitches are on the uptick ahead of Thursday’s CPUC vote on whether to allow more robotaxis in SF. Oh, and Willie Brown is now a lobbyist for Cruise.
Business & Tech SF Says Driverless Car Problems ‘Skyrocketing,’ Techies Fume at Our Lack of Enthusiasm for the Glitches The SFMTA says that dangerous incidents with self-driving robotaxis have increased exponentially in recent months, while Cruise, Waymo, and their associated venture capitalist types excoriate SF for not adequately loving the buggy self-driving cars.
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.
