An autonomous cruise line vehicle cruises the streets of San Francisco, California. JOHN G. MABANGLO (EFE)
Two incidents on Thursday have led to a drop in the number of self-driving cabs in San Francisco. It’s likely that the hundreds of tourists who visited the California city over the summer saw at least one of these General Motors cruise vehicles trundling through the streets with no one behind the wheel. The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) reported Friday night that the company had agreed to cut the number of cars on the road by half while investigating the accidents. These accidents come just a week after San Francisco renewed driver’s licenses for two autonomous taxi companies.
“The cruise ship will have no more than 50 unmanned vehicles operating throughout the day and 150 vehicles overnight,” the DMV said in a statement released late Friday. The ministry has warned that it reserves the decision to withdraw the company’s operating licenses if investigations carried out reveal that these cars pose an “irrational risk to public safety”.
On Thursday night, one of Cruise’s taxis collided with a fire engine that was supposed to be driving to an emergency. According to the company, the vehicle had a green light at an intersection and was unable to spot the bus in time, which was traveling in one lane in the opposite direction to run through the red light. In a statement, Cruise said the buildings on the corner of Polk Street and Turk Street blocked the view of the unit’s cameras, preventing firefighters from seeing them until they were halfway across the intersection.
“Cruis’ car recognized the danger of a collision and began to decelerate, but was unable to avoid the accident,” the company statement said. These taxis, the statement said, also have radars that must detect the sirens of emergency vehicles driving around them. “During the 3 million miles driven by our autonomous vehicles in San Francisco, we had more than 168,000 interactions with emergency vehicles in the first seven months of this year,” they say.
On board the unmanned unit was a user who was treated at the same location by emergency teams and later taken to a hospital for treatment of “non-serious” injuries. Unlike services like Lyft or Uber, not everyone can board one of these units. Users can download the apps and then be on a long waiting list (one of which has more than 100,000 people) before they can request a ride.
The other incident happened a few blocks south of town that same night. An empty taxi was hit by a car going through a traffic light at high speed.
Cruise was one of two companies last week to receive approval from local regulators to offer 24-hour taxi service. The permit does not impose any restrictions on the number of cars or mileage. The company had about 300 operational units at night and about 100 in the morning prior to the collisions. This is just a small fraction compared to the more than 10,000 units that Uber and Lyft have in the area.
The other company is Waymo, a company backed by Alphabet (Google). The company operates 100 units (out of 250 total) located in San Francisco and San Mateo County to the south of the city, which serves as the cradle of several technology companies. Taxis, which have a top speed of 105 kilometers per hour, are not allowed to drive on the metro area’s freeways.
Despite recent incidents, San Francisco is experiencing an autonomous transportation boom. While authorities are investigating Cruise, other companies are pressing ahead with their testing. One of them is the Loop, which wants to offer the city its first small-group transportation service. The company has invited a few people to experience the pilot tests they are developing on the small Treasure Island off San Francisco Bay.
Loop’s light trucks reach a maximum speed of 20 kilometers per hour. They are not fully autonomous. During this test phase, the units are manned by a driver who intervenes in special situations, such as when an emergency vehicle appears on the route. According to The San Francisco Standard, Treasure Island residents are excited about the opportunity to have a new mode of transportation in a region where most are forced to walk or have their own car.
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