GM’s Cruise self-driving service in San Francisco has been offering driverless rides since June of 2022, and its cars have reportedly covered over half a million miles without a driver at the wheel.
But even so, autonomous driving technology isn’t exactly bulletproof and the videos below, captured by Twitter user @k_pendergrast, show how things can go sideways, especially when there’s no one in the car to intervene.
As you can see, a Cruise-operated Chevy Bolt got stuck at an intersection and put its emergency lights on, even though the traffic light was green. According to the Twitter user who filmed the whole thing, the autonomous vehicle sat there for multiple light cycles as all the other cars passed it.
Interestingly – and this is where things start to look like a satirical science fiction movie – a Waymo-operated Jaguar I-Pace pulls up behind the stuck Bolt and waits for the intersection to clear.
But unlike GM’s Cruise, which has a permit to charge for rides without a driver present, Waymo still has an emergency driver on board to take over when things don’t go as planned, so the Jaguar didn’t sit for too long in the autonomous traffic jam.
Eventually, after 13 minutes, another Cruise Chevy Bold arrived on the scene with a technician on board, who drove the stuck car away and freed up the road. Nobody was injured, but some drivers were not pleased with the situation. Thankfully, driverless cars don’t have feelings.
This isn’t the first time Cruise cabs stirred up chaos on the streets of San Francisco. Back in July of 2022, a bunch of autonomous Bolts clustered together, blocking the entire width of the road.
Another incident saw a Cruise cab being pulled over by the police for driving without the lights on during the night, but there was nobody inside the car. Eventually, Cruise’s people got in touch with the police and sorted things out, but it must have been a weird situation for those involved.
Clearly, there are still issues that need to be dealt with by the makers of these autonomous cars before they can offer services to a much larger audience.
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