SF News Waymo Drives on Wrong Side of Street, But Has Excuse Because of Taunting Unicycle Riders A Friday night incident saw a self-driving Waymo pop into the wrong lane for a couple blocks, but it may have had good reason to do so, because it was being swarmed by electric unicycle riders.
Business & Tech Has the Self-Driving Car Bubble Burst? Some Analysts Say So, As Apple Exits the Autonomous Vehicle Race When the $70 billion tech giant Apple abandons an idea, it may be an idea simply not worth pursuing, which could be the state of the suddenly struggling autonomous vehicle industry.
SF News Waymo Problems With Self-Driving Cars, as Waymo Collisions With Tow Truck Force Software Recall Two self-driving Waymo robotaxis hit a truck being towed in Phoenix two months ago, perhaps confused because the angle of a truck being towed but facing rearward, and the Google-owned company recalled the software running the vehicles.
SF News Peskin Says SFPD Has ‘Promising Leads’ In Hunt for Who Torched That Waymo In Chinatown Saturday Whoever set that self-driving Waymo car on fire in Chinatown Saturday night may have reason for worry, as the district’s supervisor Aaron Peskin claims that SFPD has “promising leads” on suspects.
Business & Tech Self-Driving Waymo Collides With Bicyclist In Potrero Hill A self-driving Waymo robotaxi apparently hit a bicyclist at about 3 p.m. Tuesday afternoon at 17th and Mississippi streets, which may put a dent in Waymo’s hopes to be considered the safer of the two big self-driving car companies.
Business & Tech Feds, DMV Investigating More SF Cruise Robotaxi Incidents Than We Realized, Two Cars Allegedly Almost Hit Kids The self-driving robotaxi company Cruise may have had a worse track record of highly dangerous near-misses than previously reported, and faces five state and federal probes into incidents like almost running over children.
SF News State Commission Alleges That Cruise Withheld Evidence, Misled Public in Pedestrian-Dragging Incident The California Public Utilities Commission is hauling self-driving taxi company Cruise to court for allegedly “failing to provide complete information” by leaving out the rather significant detail that their car dragged a pedestrian 20 feet in an October 2 collision.
SF News Cruise Recalling Self-Driving Robotaxis Nationwide, Amidst Report Vehicles Had Safety Issues Around Children While the recall appears temporary, Cruise is pulling all of its 950 self-driving robotaxis from the streets, and a separate report shows Cruise internal communications acknowledged safety issues around children and holes in roads.
Business & Tech Feds Now Investigating Cruise Self-Driving Robotaxis Over Their Behavior Around Pedestrians The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened a probe into an unknown number of incidents where Cruise robotaxis allegedly encroached on pedestrians, in the wake of one SF Cruise car running over a hit-and-run victim.
SF News Cruise Vehicle Involved In Collision With SF Fire Truck; Separate Collision With Cruise Vehicle Occurs In Mission It was a rough night for the robotaxis Thursday, with two self-driving Cruise vehicles getting into car crashes — one striking, or getting struck by, a fire truck that was responding to a call, and one passenger was hospitalized with a head injury.
SF News SF City Attorney Files Motion to Halt Roll-Out of More Self-Driving Cruise and Waymo Robotaxis City Attorney David Chiu is ramping up the pushback against Waymo and Cruise self-driving robotaxis in SF, filing a motion with the state to reverse their approval of unlimited robotaxis on San Francisco streets.
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.
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 Renegade Group Disabling Self-Driving Cars With Orange Cones Speaks Out A local TV station spent a night with the monkey-wrench gang that’s been stopping self-driving cars with mere orange cones, and yes, it seems this incredibly simple hack does indeed work.
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.
Business & Tech Pranksters Claim They Can Stop Self-Driving Cars With Orange Cones, Waymo and Cruise Not Amused A viral video this week made the curious claim that self-driving robotaxis on SF streets can be brought to a halt with the placement of an orange cone on the vehicle’s hood. Cruise and Waymo have both responded that the jokers doing this need to knock it off.
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 Elon Musk Ordered To Be Deposed in Trial Over 2018 Tesla Autopilot Crash in Mountain View Tesla attorneys have argued that Elon Musk can’t be responsible for video evidence of him touting “Full Self-Driving” mode because the videos might be deepfakes, so the judge in the trial of a man killed in a 2018 Tesla crash is ordering Musk to be deposed himself.
SF News SF Regulators Have Had It With Self-Driving Cruise, Waymo Mishaps, Ask State To Halt Expansion In light of 92 incidents in seven months of self-driving Cruise and Waymo cars stopping, idling, and causing havoc on San Francisco streets, the SF County Transportation Authority is asking the state to hold off on giving them more expanded permits.
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.
SF News We Now Have Video of the Eight-Car Pileup Allegedly Caused By Self-Driving Tesla A reporter’s public records request has produced video of the Thanksgiving Day multi-car crash that the driver claims was caused by his Tesla in “full self-driving” mode, and hmmm, the reporter who obtained the video is suddenly shadowbanned on Elon Musk’s Twitter.
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 Flock of GM Cruise Self-Driving Cars Just Plain Stop Working, Block Gough Street ‘For a Couple of Hours’ The latest self-driving car mishap comes courtesy of a cluster of GM Cruise driverless taxis that simply stopped in their tracks “for a couple of hours” Wednesday night and had to be manually pushed off the street by GM employees.
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.
SF News Detestable Tesla ‘Backseat Driver’ Makes Bail, Buys Another Tesla, Backseat-Drives Again Tesla troll Param Sharma clearly revels in being public enemy No. 1, as he just bought another new Tesla and drove it from the backseat again in front of TV cameras. Also, he would like us to know he is very rich.
