The robot cars are not okay

Self-driving cars still need to pass driver’s ed, right? Because according to letters sent by San Francisco transportation officials to California regulators last week, they desperately need it.

🤔 Wait, but why?... First to set the stage: the main characters of this drama are the autonomous taxis run by GM-owned Cruise, which has been running a paid autonomous taxicab service in parts of San Francisco, and Alphabet-owned Waymo, which is still testing its paid self-driving service with an employee in the car.

And per city officials, things aren’t going too well.

• There have been two cases of Cruise vehicles holding up firefighters on active duty.
• 92 cases of Cruise self-driving cars making unexpected stops in travel lanes.
• A server outage caused ~60 Cruise vehicles to simultaneously freeze on public roads for a 90-minute period.
• A Waymo test vehicle drove into a construction site… and just hung out.
• There’s also been examples of cars driving on sidewalks, and doing a terrible job escaping from the police.

👀 Looking ahead… Given the above, city officials are asking state regulators to pump the brakes on (heh) or reverse a key December 2022 approval that allows Cruise to operate its robotaxis anywhere in San Francisco 24/7, a decision that could soon expand to LA and the rest of California.