It’s been a little over two months since Cruise started letting the people of San Francisco catch rides on its driverless robotaxis, and one of its cars already had a run-in with police.
San Francisco police were left scratching their heads after they pulled over a car earlier this month for driving without headlights at night and found no one inside.
That’s because it was a self-driving car, autonomously controlled by a company called Cruise.
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Tech has serious implications for every part of our lives going forward — including driving on the highway. And yet, Big Tech loves to downplay the risks. Here at The Western Journal, we believe society needs to be cautious and we’ll point out the potential pitfalls in Big Tech’s plan.
The video illustrated what Cruise Chief Executive Kyle Vogt previously said was one of the biggest challenges for autonomous vehicles – how to interact with humans.
Cruise, which blamed human error for the lack of headlights, said it works closely with the police on how to interact with its vehicles and has a dedicated phone number for police to call. Once the officer was clear of the vehicle, Cruise said the car relocated to the nearest safe location.
Cruise is operating a small number of vehicles to give full driverless rides to the public free of charge at night in San Francisco. The company is seeking the last regulatory approval required to launch a commercial driverless service in a densely populated city.
Ironically, Cruise CEO Vogt last month had said a scenario where a police officer pulls over a driverless car has to go smoothly.
The car, a Chevy Bolt, was originally stopped because it didn’t have its headlights on. After the first brief stop, when the police officer first approached it and found it driverless, the car pulled away, crossed an intersection, and pulled up in front of a Chinese restaurant. The police car followed and pulled up behind the vehicle, lights flashing.
The company said the car moved away because it was going “to the nearest safe location for the traffic stop as intended.”
Cop in San Francisco pulls over a car. Cop goes to drivers door to speak to driver. But there is no driver as it’s a driverless car! Car then drives itself away. Cops give chase. Surreal. pic.twitter.com/h6qjIjphj5
— Paddy Cosgrave (@paddycosgrave) April 11, 2022
In the video, three officers could be seen moving around the vehicle, trying to get inside and shining flashlights in to determine where the driver was — if there was a driver. The officers ended up calling Cruise, which took the car off of autonomous control and put it on the remote control so they could drive it.
No ticket was issued.
The Chronicle reported:
“Experts said the incident showed that autonomous-car companies still have a way to go in figuring out human-robot interactions — although some shortfalls could have been remedied with basic common sense.”
“Situations like this are bound to be more common now that both Cruise, a spin-off from General Motors, and Waymo, the self-driving unit of Google parent Alphabet, are operating autonomous cars on California public roads with no one behind the wheel.”
The Verge added more details:
Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors, uses LIDAR technology to power its vehicles’ self-driving capabilities. The company has been using the cars to shuttle around its San Francisco-based employees since 2017, but only just opened a waiting list to taxi the city’s general population.
We still don’t know what exactly caused the Cruise vehicle to operate without its headlights. Perhaps the car’s automatic headlights feature was disabled or failed to detect the darkness around it. Either way, it is a bit concerning. Cruise vehicles are only authorized to drive from 10PM to 6AM, which obviously makes headlights pretty important.
In 2018, a self-driving Uber vehicle struck and killed a pedestrian walking her bike across the road in Tempe, Arizona. Subsequent investigations from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found that Uber turned off Volvo’s factory emergency braking system to prevent any interaction with Uber’s self-driving software, but it’s unclear whether that contributed to the crash.
Sources: WND, SFChronicle, Theverge
What an idiotic idea – driverless cars. Have they nothing else worthwhile to put their minds to? The brains who are brainless.