Self-driving cars are flooding the streets of San Francisco, and many of them don’t have a safety driver behind the wheel.
In August, two of the leading autonomous vehicle companies, General Motors’ Cruise and Alphabet’s Waymo, received permission to expand their operations and allow people to hail a self-driving car in the same way they would hail an Uber. Users invited or granted access through a waitlist after registering can hail robotaxis in select regions of the city for the price of a typical rideshare.
But the start was fraught with problems. The cars drove into firefighting scenes, caused construction delays, disabled ambulances and even snaked their way into active crime scenes.
“There were more than 75 incidents,” said San Francisco Fire Chief Jeanine Nicholson. “It’s like playing Russian roulette. It impacts public safety and we need to fix that.”
San Francisco city attorney David Chiu said, “There are still some glitches that need to be addressed.”
“And that’s with just a few hundred vehicles,” said Chiu. “The idea that thousands of vehicles could soon be on our roads is a cause for concern.”
In October, the California Department of Motor Vehicles revoked Cruise’s permission to operate its driverless fleet in the state, citing an incident in which a Cruise vehicle dragged a pedestrian 20 feet after a collision.
Cruise quickly expanded to other cities, including Phoenix, Austin, Dallas, Houston and Miami, but the company halted driverless operations nationwide after the company’s suspension in California. Waymo still operates robotaxis in San Francisco.
Before Cruise’s permit was revoked, CNBC’s Deirdre Bosa took a ride in one of his autonomous vehicles. She also tried Waymo and offers a comparison of the two very different rides. She sat down with Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt, who was optimistic the company could overcome these recent hurdles.
“In the next few years it will be completely normal for people in big cities to get around the city in a robotaxi,” said Vogt.
Watch the video to see how the rollout of robotaxis in the city has gone and what’s next.