More from Self-driving cars: Google and others map the road to automated vehicles
Houston is the next city in the US to get a robotaxi service, courtesy of Cruise, which just announced the launch today. The driverless vehicles will be available seven days a week from 9PM-6AM in Downtown, Midtown, East Downtown, Montrose, Hyde Park, and River Oaks neighborhoods. Robotaxi companies have been targeting bigger, more populous markets, as the pressure to start bringing in more revenue continues to grow. Waymo just started testing the waters in LA, and now Cruise is going after the fourth biggest city in the US.
This opinion piece in the New York Times argues we’re “driving blind” when it comes to autonomous vehicles, citing recent robotaxi crashes in San Francisco and the growing number of fatal Tesla Autopilot incidents. The writer argues that while the federal government regulates hardware, and the states oversee drivers, there’s no one testing to see whether the software operating these vehicles is up to snuff. And that amounts to “a loophole large enough for Elon Musk, General Motors and Waymo to drive thousands of cars through.”
[The New York Times]
The autonomous shuttles offer free rides along a fixed, seven-stop route in the artificial island’s center from August 2023 to April 2024 (via AP News).
Called The Loop, the shuttle has no steering wheel, but an onboard attendant can take over with a handheld remote if needed, according to Insider. Its maker, Beep, previously tested it as a medical supply transport in Florida in 2020.
When two people die in very similar crashes years apart, the reason seems obvious. Autopilot, Tesla’s driver assist system, can’t recognize trucks crossing the road. They knew it couldn’t, and they didn’t fix it. And now we have testimony from their engineers admitting this.
Despite the company’s knowledge “that there’s cross traffic or potential for cross traffic, the Autopilot at the time was not designed to detect that,” according to testimony given in 2021 by company engineer Chris Payne that was excerpted in a recent court filing. Engineer Nicklas Gustafsson provided a similar account in a 2021 deposition.
The family for one of the dead Tesla owners is seeking punitive damages in a lawsuit set to go to trial this October.
Car critics in San Francisco are placing orange traffic cones on the hoods of Waymo and Cruise robotaxis in protest of an upcoming vote to allow the autonomous vehicles to operate at all hours. The cones cause the vehicles to stall in the middle of the road — which is a weird thing to do if janky robot cars blocking emergency vehicles is something you want to avoid.
