San Francisco robotaxi traffic jam is a warning to the world, says city official | 24CA News
As It Happens6:34San Francisco robotaxi site visitors jam is a warning to the world, says metropolis official
The day after California authorized an enlargement of driverless taxis, 10 of them got here to a grinding halt on a busy San Francisco road, making a gridlock that encompassed a number of blocks.
The offender? A music pageant.
“Cell phones were overwhelmed, and as a result, they were not able to take control of these cars — which is a pretty frightening systemic defect,” Aaron Peskin, president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (SFBV), instructed As It Happens visitor host Paul Hunter.
Not solely was there the 10-car back-up of Cruise-owned autonomous taxis in metropolis’s North Shore neighbourhood on Friday, however on the opposite facet of town, nearer to the Outside Lands music pageant, Peskin mentioned “there were also scores of them that came to a grinding halt.”
“I got … tons of texts and emails and phone calls from pissed-off constituents,” he mentioned.
The SFBV is utilizing the incidents to petition the state to revoke its authorized enlargement of self-driving taxis till this subject — and others prefer it — are resolved.
“We’re not trying to put the genie back in the bottle, but we are quite concerned that they are rushing things, that it should still be in a testing phase,” Peksin mentioned.
“The notion that the state of California has now allowed unlimited numbers of them while these problems continue to persist is a public safety hazard.”
In an emailed assertion, Cruise mentioned the corporate “successfully transported thousands of concert-goers, amidst widespread reports of traffic congestion, contributing to a very small portion of traffic blockages overall on Friday night.”
“We addressed these issues and did not see any recurrence throughout the Saturday or Sunday concert days,” spokesperson Drew Pusateri mentioned.
“We’re in communication with regulators about this event and how we plan to continue improving our operations serving riders seeking safe, driverless transportation to and from large events.”
A controversial enlargement
San Francisco has lengthy been on the forefront of testing autonomous autos, and in relation to robotaxis, there are two main gamers — Cruise, which is owned by General Motors, and Waymo, which is owned by Google’s mum or dad firm Alphabet.
Collectively, they’ve greater than 500 autonomous autos in operation citywide.
Waymo didn’t reply to a request for remark. Both firms have repeatedly asserted their robotaxis are safer than human drivers, haven’t triggered any deaths or life-threatening accidents over tens of millions of collective kilometres pushed and that real-world testing is vital to perfecting the know-how.
The day earlier than the headline-grabbing site visitors jam, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), in a 3-1 vote, authorized a plan to permit Cruise and Waymo to start out providing driverless journeys to paying prospects, 24 hours a day.
Before the vote, the firms had been solely allowed to supply fared service with out a security driver throughout sure occasions and in restricted elements of town — however might supply free driverless service anyplace and any time.
“While we do not yet have the data to judge [autonomous vehicles] against the standard human drivers are setting, I do believe in the potential of this technology to increase safety on the roadway,” CPUC commissioner John Reynolds mentioned in a press launch.
“Collaboration between key stakeholders in the industry and the first responder community will be vital in resolving issues as they arise in this innovative, emerging technology space.”
Peskin says all of it comes all the way down to cash as each firms compete for a slice of {the marketplace}.
“They would much rather start recouping on their billions of dollars of investments in this technology than to smooth out the rough edges at the front end,” he mentioned.
Not a brand new phenomenon for San Francisco
What occurred on Friday is way from distinctive, Peskin mentioned. San Franciscans are used to autonomous autos, he mentioned, and have made a sport of documenting their glitches on social media.
What’s new, he mentioned, is that Cruise, in a social media assertion, blamed Friday’s glitches on “wireless bandwidth constraints” from the pageant, which “delayed connectivity to our vehicles.”
Lots of issues can knock out or decelerate wi-fi bandwidth, Peskin says — and that “scares the heck out of our first responders.”
The SFBV, he mentioned, has already documented 60 incidents of autonomous autos interfering with first responders.
“They have blocked hearth engines. They’ve gone into downed energy cables in a windstorm in March,” he mentioned. “These cars are good in normal circumstances, but they do not know how to behave in an emergency situation.”
As self-driving vehicles turn out to be a actuality, they open up a whole new world of transit prospects. But when vehicles are related on-line, there’s the danger that they are often hacked, as can related street and metropolis infrastructure.
He’s calling on different jurisdictions to take heed.
“San Francisco is the canary in the coal mine and the issues that we are experiencing and that we are raising will soon sweep across cities … around the world,” he mentioned.
“I would suggest to the good people of Canada and to other cities and states in the United States that they start putting the regulatory mechanisms in place that we were sadly lacking in California.”
