General Motors Co.’s Cruise on Thursday became the first company in San Francisco to receive permission to charge for a self-driving car ride, after overcoming objections from city officials.
Self-driving test cars with human safety drivers have become a constant sight in San Francisco, and completely driverless ones are also common. Turning them into a budding business in a major US city would be a milestone in the long, delayed journey of driverless taxi service.
Cruise’s final hurdle in California was permits. Cruise said it will launch paid services using 30 driverless Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicles over the next few weeks.
The California Public Utilities Commission approved Cruise’s permit late Thursday by a 4-0 vote.
Commissioner Clifford Reichschafen said during the meeting the panel was taking a “careful, incremental approach” to regulating autonomous vehicles.
“This proposal is another important step in that effort,” he said. “This will enable our employees to continue to collect very important data that will support future phases of development.”
Cars will be limited to a maximum speed of 30 mph (48 kph), a geographic area that avoids the city and will not be allowed on highways from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. or during times of dense fog, rain or smoking.
Disability and occupational groups expressed support, and state commission staff said the cruise’s proposal protects the safety of passengers.
Citing concerns that unusual behavior by cars could result in bodily harm, San Francisco fire, police and transit officials wanted state regulators to ban cruises before allowing them in the ride-hailing business. He recommended that further approvals are needed to add more cars and a new working group of state and local officials.
A confused cruise AV briefly blocked a San Francisco fire engine in April, en route to a three-alarm fire, and a driverless cruise was stopped by police a few days earlier, local officials said. The car was seen driving before the officer left. Cruz said his cars made safe decisions.
While rival Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo has charged for rides in suburban Phoenix since 2018, Cruise’s proposed deployment to its hometown of San Francisco, a more densely populated, mountainous and unpredictable area, is considered a major challenge by tech experts.
Waymo has given employees driverless rides in San Francisco since March, and Cruise has offered free late-night test rides to the public since February.
But there is also an age-old issue that self-driving cars cannot always accurately predict how humans will react to changing events, including the actions of the car. A former employee said that Cruz even named the issue a “couples problem.”
Accidents and near misses
In the decade since California first allowed public testing of self-driving vehicles, smooth rides that obey traffic rules are the norm but the surprises persist.
In a public presentation last year, Cruise senior director Brandon Basso described “kinetic uncertainty” as facing self-driving cars in predicting the actions of humans on the road and deciding when to yield, for example. is a challenge.
Cruise said its vehicles understand complex social dynamics and avoid uncertainty by taking safe steps.
Even San Francisco officials challenged the permit stating that “despite specific exceptions, the driverless cruise AV generally operates as an alert and obedient defensive driver.”
Although self-driving cars can adapt to nearby rule-breakers, “human error or behavior such as a violation of road rules that deviates from a possible behavior pattern is a factor in a disproportionate number of collisions,” says Waymo. told Reuters in a statement.
Cruise doesn’t reveal what three former employees call two key safety statistics internally: how often its cars encounter new conditions or experience what it calls “safety-critical incidents,” which can lead to accidents and near-misses. – is a combination of omissions.
Public records seen by Reuters showed Cruz is in control of his computers and 34 accidents involving bodily harm or more than $1,000 in damages during the four-year period ending May 2021 involving nearly 3 million miles of driving. had to face.
The documents, which Cruz unpublished in February in response to a request from Reuters, repeatedly show his efforts to avoid confrontation.
In 28 cases, Cruise pursued technological improvements, often related to improving predictions of what humans would do. It has also relaxed some rules: including a 2019 crash response, which allows the car to “adjust strict adherence to all marked lanes” so that it can move around parked trucks or slow cyclists.
Waymo sought a court order in January to preserve the confidentiality of its comparable data, calling it a trade secret. The state did not resist the request, and Waymo’s record was redacted.
Some accidents have led to lawsuits. A bicycle courier and scooter rider has sued Cruise, and Waymo settled in a 2016 car accident.
Cruz said the car was not self-driving during the scooter incident and is fighting the case.
Cyclist Christopher McCleary, who settled his lawsuit last month, said he had sustained injuries from crashing into a cruise car he said had come to an unexpected stop in San Francisco in 2018, and that he publicly question the use of driverless cars.
“Unfortunately,” he said by email, “I feel like Cruise ‘learned’ from killing me and it’s actually a sacrifice I have to make to allow Cruise to become ‘better’ at predicting situations.” was.”
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