State regulators cut Cruise's fleet after S.F. crashes involving its driverless cars

[SouthBayDem]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

The California Department of Motor Vehicles asked Cruise on Friday to reduce its fleet of driverless taxis by half pending an investigation into recent crashes that occurred, including two collisions in San Francisco on Thursday night.

“Cruise has agreed to a 50% reduction and will have no more than 50 driverless vehicles in operation during the day and 150 driverless vehicles in operation at night,” a statement Friday evening from DMV said. “The DMV reserves the right, following the investigation of the facts, to suspend or revoke testing and/or deployment permits if there is determined to be an unreasonable risk to public safety.”

The investigation comes after a driverless Cruise car with a passenger inside collided with an emergency vehicle on Thursday night, the company said.

Shortly after 10 p.m., the driverless Cruise car, which had a green light, entered the intersection at Polk and Turk streets in the Tenderloin, the company wrote in a tweet Friday morning, and was hit by an emergency vehicle that was en route to an emergency scene. The company did not specify what type of emergency vehicle it was.

Read more: https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/cruise-driverless-san-francisco-crash-18302845.php

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. Well, well, well.

I have been having a lot of trouble getting people to know or find out about the problems with driverless cars. They all think that everything is fine with the in SF. Not true. The technology really isn't there yet.

[PortTack]

3. Nailed it! The technology is just not there, yet Tesla and others say it is.

Personally you wouldn’t catch me in a driverless car

[deurbano]

2. I live in SF, and I don't want them! (I think it's some state commission making us have them.)

[speak easy]

4. "the driverless Cruise car, which had a green light, entered the intersection

... and was hit by an emergency vehicle"

That is going to be difficult to program.

“The DMV reserves the right, following the investigation of the facts, to suspend or revoke testing and/or deployment permits if there is determined to be an unreasonable risk to public safety.”

Speeding Emergency Vehicles going through red lights are a [reasonable] risk to public safety.

More programing needed.

[kimbutgar]

5. I also live in SF and I hate them

I have had to back up 3 times on a narrow street because the cruise car won’t pull over to let me pass. A muni bus in my neighborhood was stopped for 15 minutes because the cruise car stopped and blocked the bus. I usually can pull over and go up a curb to let the muni bus pass. Someone had to call cruise to redirect the cat so the bus could pass. Coming home last week from a concert at 12:30 am I couldn’t get over the number of cruise vehicles on the street. When I see them now I try to avoid them and go down another street.

[Crowman2009]

6. The media needs to stop portraying these hi-tech entrepreneurs as geniuses making a better future.

When in reality they are more akin to the greedy pigs of the guilded age looking to grab as much cash they can regardless of the corpses and wreckage that results from it.