Table Of Content
- Now in Phoenix
- Historic weekend as driverless cars navigate through streets of San Francisco
- Cruise resumes manual driving as next step in return to driverless mission
- The invisible seafaring industry that keeps the internet afloat
- Our services
- Cruise starts testing fully driverless cars in San Francisco
- First responders aren't happy with driverless cars

This month it sent out one car at night in San Francisco's rather sleepy Sunset District on the far west side of the city next to the Pacific Ocean. Jeff Brink, who also lives in San Francico, was giving his Michigan relatives a tour of the city when they saw a driverless car near Union Square. He has seen driverless cars being tested over the past few years, and says he is ready for his turn. This month, one of Cruise’s top competitors, Waymo — owned by Alphabet, Google’s parent company — expanded its driverless vehicles into Los Angeles amid growing concern.
Now in Phoenix
Throughout the city, small groups took pictures at intersections and stop signs to admire driverless cars, which are now able to operate 24/7 picking up paying passengers. “The AV [autonomous vehicle] braked aggressively before impact and because it detected a collision, it attempted to pull over to avoid further safety issues,” Forghani said. “When the AV tried to pull over, it continued before coming to a final stop, pulling the pedestrian forward. Our thoughts continue to be with the victim as we hope for a rapid and complete recovery.
Historic weekend as driverless cars navigate through streets of San Francisco
Residents of San Francisco and Phoenix have grown used to witnessing something that, a decade ago, would have seemed magical. In some parts of these cities, at certain times, cars drive by with nobody behind the wheel. Our goal is to earn trust and build partnerships with the communities such that, ultimately, we resume fully driverless operations in collaboration with a city. Cruise has a strong history in Phoenix and it is home to a large number of Cruise employees. It’s a city that supports AV and transportation innovation, and Phoenix leaders strive to ensure the metro area is an incubator for advanced technology. We plan to expand this effort to other select cities as we continue to engage with officials and community leaders.
Cruise resumes manual driving as next step in return to driverless mission
It previously said that it will roll out fared rides gradually, and it reiterated that plan in its latest announcement, where it noted that it's "inviting more people" into its driverless vehicles every week. The goal is to eventually be able to offer fared rides all day across the entire city. Citing public safety concerns about Cruise‘s robotaxi line operating in San Francisco, California DMV officials announced Tuesday that the agency had suspended permits for the driverless cars deployed by General Motors’ autonomous vehicle subsidiary. California regulators on Thursday gave a robotic taxi service the green light to begin charging passengers for driverless rides in San Francisco, a first in a state where dozens of companies have been trying to train vehicles to steer themselves on increasingly congested roads.
We are committed to safely deploying our technology in close collaboration with officials and communities at every step. That’s how many times robotaxis have made unplanned stops on public streets in San Francisco since June of 2022. Professor Banafa says if San Francisco wants to be the leader in AI technologies, then it needs projects like driverless cars to showcase what can be done. The human driver of the vehicle that initially struck the woman has not been caught.
There are few clear federal regulations that set rules for how autonomous vehicles must function, and what standards they must meet before they are tested on public roads. At the federal level, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration gathers mostly self-reported crash data from companies. In California, the DMV issues permits for testing and deployment, and the CPUC regulates commercial passenger service programs.
Our services
We advised on safety, data-sharing, transparency and ensuring that the benefits are evenly spread. In the 21st century, many cities were spooked by the rapid disruptions wrought by ride-hail companies such as Uber and Lyft. In the last year, Cruise cars have been involved in a number of incidents that, while not directly life-threatening, were really annoying for a city trying to go about its business.
Cruise self-driving cars suspended in California over safety issues - NPR
Cruise self-driving cars suspended in California over safety issues.
Posted: Tue, 24 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Cruise starts testing fully driverless cars in San Francisco
The more we learn from real-world uses of the technology, the greater seems the mismatch between its purported solutions and the problems facing cities. But in making life easier for self-driving cars and the few people likely to benefit, we might make life harder for everyone else. "It's amazing, we love it. Safest thing. My kid loves it. Big life saver," says San Francisco resident Beth Yemane, who has been using Waymo for months during its test phase. DMV officials said that there is no set time frame for a suspension, but that the agency provided Cruise with “the steps needed to apply to reinstate its suspended permits.” It wasn’t immediately clear what those steps would include. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, members of Safe Street Rebel continue to go out at night and stalk the vehicles one cone at a time. "The traffic cone protest is an example of how things in the real world can really confound machines, even ones as sophisticated and finely tuned as this," says Margaret O'Mara, a history professor at the University of Washington who studies the tech industry.

First responders aren't happy with driverless cars
She graduated with a double major in political science and journalism from Northeastern University. Forbes reporters follow company ethical guidelines that ensure the highest quality. Follow Roeloffs for continued coverage of streaming wars, pop culture news and trending topics. Cruise isn't the first company to receive a permit for fully self-driving cars, but it is the first to put them to the test in San Francisco, which Ammann called "one of the craziest driving environments." In a video released Wednesday, Cruise showed off its first fully driverless test on an empty SF street at night.
They accuse Cruise of deploying its self-driving cars during the spring lockdown in defiance of public health orders banning nonessential travel. And they say Cruise isn’t doing enough to keep them safe during these public health crises. Cruise was the fifth company to receive a driverless permit from the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles, the others being Waymo, Nuro, Zoox, and AutoX. Currently, 60 companies have an active permit to test autonomous vehicles with a safety driver in California.
He used open source data for his research, so his findings aren't based specifically on Cruise and Waymo. Wan found that ordinary objects on the road can lead to dangerous driving behavior. Part of this, he says, is because the cars are programmed to be overly conservative. In January, Cruise introduced its driverless ride-sharing prototype, the Origin.
Now, we are building on that work to create high-quality semantic maps and gather road information to ensure future operations meet elevated safety and performance targets. And because no two cities are the same, we plan to conduct this manual and supervised driving in multiple cities - starting with Phoenix - to expose our AVs to a diverse set of driving environments and conditions as we prepare for future driverless service. In a media call, Cruise CEO Dan Ammann said to expect more "tangible" progress for its self-driving cars in 2021, but he wouldn't give an update on when a Cruise driverless taxi service would be available to the public. That app-based service was supposed to launch by the end of 2019, but still hasn't happened. Instead, Cruise has been testing its fleet of 300 cars in San Francisco and Michigan since 2015. Some of the strongest opposition comes from the San Francisco police and fire departments.
The group's goal is to incapacitate the driverless cars roaming San Francisco's streets as a protest against the city being used as a testing ground for this emerging technology. Forghani said Cruise provided regulators a video of the incident and is complying with the DMV's order and "pausing operations." Those cars that have a human safety driver will be allowed to continue operating in the state. As we continue working to rebuild trust and determine the city where we will scale driverless, we also remain focused on continuing to improve our performance and overall safety approach. To that end, Cruise is resuming manual driving to create maps and gather road information in select cities, starting in Phoenix. This work is done using human-driven vehicles without autonomous systems engaged, and is a critical step for validating our self-driving systems as we work towards returning to our driverless mission.