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 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 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.
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 Tesla Faces New Federal Probe Over Possible Autopilot Crash In Walnut Creek; Also, Musk Seems to Have 'Disbanded' Their PR Department A Tesla that may have been operating in "Full Self-Driving" mode crashed into a firetruck at high speed on I-680 last month, and this has triggered a new investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
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 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 Self-Driving Vehicles Have Been Involved in Nine Hit-and-Runs This Year There’s no evidence that the self-driving cars were at fault in these accidents, but there is a very clear pattern that when people realize they’ve been in an accident with a car that has no driver, they just drive right away.
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.”
SF News Report: SFPD Already Using Surveillance Video From Self-Driving Cars An internal SFPD document obtained by VICE News shows that not only can the SF Police Department pull the camera video from autonomous Waymo and Cruise cars, but more chillingly, that they have “already done this several times.”
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 Why Are Waymo's Self-Driving Cars Constantly Hitting the Same Dead End On 15th Avenue? Neighbors on one street in San Francisco's Richmond District seem to be witnessing the training of robot cars in the art of the three-point turn — over, and over, and over again.
