Dashcam Footage Shows Driverless Cars Clogging San Francisco
upstart writes:
[...] The 54 [Felton line], brought to a halt by an autonomous vehicle belonging to Alphabet's Waymo, isn't the only bus that's run into trouble with San Francisco's growing crowd of driverless vehicles. Bus and train surveillance videos obtained by WIRED through public records requests show a litany of incidents since September in which anxiety and confusion stirred up by driverless cars has spilled onto the streets of the US city that has become the epicenter for testing them.
As the incidents stack up, the companies behind the autonomous vehicles, such as Waymo and General Motors' Cruise, want to add more robotaxis to San Francisco's streets, cover more territory, and run at all hours. Waymo and Cruise say they learn from every incident. Each has logged over 1 million driverless miles and say their cars are safe enough to keep powering forward. But expansions are subject to approval from California state regulators, which have been pressed by San Francisco officials for years to restrict autonomous vehicles until issues subside.
Driverless cars have completed thousands of journeys in San Francisco-taking people to work, to school, and to and from dates. They have also proven to be a glitchy nuisance, snarling traffic and creeping into hazardous terrain such as construction zones and downedpower lines. Autonomous cars in San Francisco made 92 unplanned stops between May and December 2022-88 percent of them on streets with transit service, according to city transportation authorities, who collected the data from social media reports, 911 calls, and other sources, because companies aren't required to report all the breakdowns.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.