A swarm of Cruise robotaxis blocked San Francisco traffic for hours

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From Yahoo Finance:

A small fleet of Cruise robotaxis in San Francisco suddenly stopped operating on Tuesday night, effectively stopping traffic on a street in the city’s Fillmore district for a couple of hours until employees were able to arrive. TechCrunch first noticed a Reddit post that featured a photo of the stalled driverless cabs at the corner of Gough and Fulton streets. Cruise — which is General Motor’s AV subsidiary — only launched its commercial robotaxi service in the city last week. The rides feature no human safety driver, are geo-restricted to certain streets and can only operate in the late evening hours.

Cruise apologized for the incident in a statement, but gave little explanation for what caused the mishap. “We had an issue earlier this week that caused some of our vehicles to cluster together,” a Cruise spokesperson said in a statement to TechCrunch. “While it was resolved and no passengers were impacted, we apologize to anyone who was inconvenienced.”

The GM-backed AV startup won the first driverless taxi permit in a major US city, and began offering San Francisco residents free rides in February. After launching its paid passenger service on June 24, early reviews from Cruise passengers came pouring in. One passenger noted that his Cruise car took an unusually long route to get to his home. Another passenger seemed to have a more positive experience, even leaving a cash tip for the driverless car.

Link to the rest at Yahoo Finance

Here’s a photo from the company:

While PG was reading this, he flashed back to Hal and Dave.

4 thoughts on “A swarm of Cruise robotaxis blocked San Francisco traffic for hours”

  1. In the Fillmore district? Take your pick, they were:

    • Smoking an unhealthy substance that’s legal in California but not federally
    • Desperately trying to find the one available parking spot
    • Stood up by their dates and just milling around complaining
    • Getting ready for a scene that will make the octopus (The Boys, Season 3, Episode 6) seem a sedate and normal choice
    • Overruled by NSC Directive 34223 of January 30, 2001 (oops, it’s top secret) (2010, to follow on PG’s thought)

    The OP missed a lot of opportunities to make this some desperately needed comic relief near the end of a difficult week. But then, given the OP, “missed a lot of opportunities” is par for the course… especially just about 2km from its offices…

      • There’s a lot we don’t know about what robotaxis do. Like, for example, how the “California drivers” being installed in all driverless vehicles are going to do outside of California.

        Or whether one of those robotaxis was proto-JohnnyCab.

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