{"id":627644,"date":"2023-04-10T09:49:02","date_gmt":"2023-04-10T14:49:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/10\/dashcam-footage-shows-driverless-cars-clogging-san-francisco\/"},"modified":"2023-04-10T09:49:02","modified_gmt":"2023-04-10T14:49:02","slug":"dashcam-footage-shows-driverless-cars-clogging-san-francisco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/10\/dashcam-footage-shows-driverless-cars-clogging-san-francisco\/","title":{"rendered":"Dashcam Footage Shows Driverless Cars Clogging San Francisco"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The bus was<\/span> stuck. San Francisco\u2019s eastbound 54 Felton line was heading up a narrow residential street when a white SUV coming the other way stopped in the middle of the road. It was a rainy Sunday evening last month, and the bus driver leaned up to the windshield and peered through the haze at the SUV\u2019s pulsing hazard lights before slumping back and exclaiming in surprise, “What the hell? No driver of the car?!”<\/p>\n

The 54, brought to a halt by an autonomous vehicle belonging to Alphabet\u2019s Waymo, isn\u2019t the only bus that\u2019s run into trouble with San Francisco\u2019s growing crowd of driverless vehicles. Bus and train surveillance videos obtained by WIRED through public records requests show a litany of incidents\u00a0since September in which anxiety and confusion stirred up by driverless cars has spilled onto the streets of the US city that has become the\u00a0epicenter for testing them<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

A San Francisco public transit bus encounters a Waymo autonomous vehicle in its path on March 5.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Courtesy of SFMTA<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

As the incidents stack up, the companies behind the autonomous vehicles, such as\u00a0Waymo<\/a> and\u00a0General Motors<\/a>\u2019 Cruise, want to add\u00a0more robotaxis<\/a> to San Francisco\u2019s streets, cover more territory, and\u00a0run at all hours<\/a>. 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\u00a0for years<\/a> to\u00a0restrict autonomous vehicles<\/a> until issues subside.<\/p>\n

Driverless cars have completed thousands of journeys in San Francisco\u2014taking people to work, to school, and to and from dates. They have also proven to be\u00a0a glitchy nuisance<\/a>,\u00a0snarling traffic<\/a> and creeping into hazardous terrain such\u00a0as construction zones<\/a> and\u00a0downed<\/a>\u00a0power lines<\/a>. Autonomous cars in San Francisco made 92 unplanned stops between May and December 2022\u201488 percent of them on streets with transit service, according to city transportation authorities, who collected the data from social media reports,\u00a0911 calls<\/a>, and other sources, because companies aren\u2019t required to report all the breakdowns.<\/p>\n

The records obtained by WIRED are more focused. They follow a previously unreported directive to staff of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency handed down last October to improve record keeping of incidents involving autonomous vehicles. Muni, as the agency is known, standardized the term \u201cdriverless car\u201d when staff report \u201cnear-misses, collisions or other incidents resulting in transit delay,\u201d according to the directive. Agency logs show 12 \u201cdriverless\u201d reports from September 2022 through March 8, 2023, though Muni video was provided for only eight of these cases. Overall, the incidents resulted in at least 83 minutes of direct delays for Muni riders, records show.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That data likely doesn\u2019t reflect the true scale of the problem. Muni staff don\u2019t follow every directive to the letter, and a single delay can slow other lines, worsening the blow. Buses and trains cannot weave around blockages as easily as pedestrians, other motorists, and cyclists, saddling transit-dependent travelers with some of the biggest headaches caused by errant driverless cars, according to transit advocates.<\/p>\n

San Francisco officials say they want to be supportive of new technology, but they first want to be shown progress on addressing failures\u2014like random stops in front of buses and trains. \u201cWhat we’re seeing is a significant uptick in traffic and other kinds of chaos on our streets,\u201d says\u00a0Jeffrey Tumlin, Muni\u2019s director of transportation<\/a>. \u201cWe are very concerned that if autonomous vehicles are allowed limitless, driverless operations in San Francisco that the traffic impacts grow exponentially.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Muni\u2019s 54 bus, which traverses San Francisco\u2019s southern edge, the vehicle blocking its way early last month was a driverless Waymo that got stranded between rows of parked cars. A human driver would have reversed, clearing space for the bus, which isn\u2019t allowed to back up without a supervisor. Instead, the Waymo Driver, as the company calls its technology, alerted a remote\u00a0\u201cfleet response specialist\u201d\u00a0to help. Waymo spokesperson Sandy Karp says that this worker provided guidance to the car that \u201cwas not ideal under the circumstances\u201d and made it challenging to resume driving.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That left the Muni driver in a bind. \u201cI can\u2019t move the bus,\u201d the driver said to one of two riders on board. \u201cThe car is automatic driving.\u201d The driver radioed managers and doffed their cap: \u201cWhoosh \u2026 Half hour, one hour. I don\u2019t know. Nothing to do.\u201d\u00a0Thirty-eight stops and about five miles remained ahead for the 54. The driver, looking out at the Waymo, expressed disappointment: \u201cThis one not smart yet. Not smart. Not good.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Paresh Dave<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The bus was stuck. San Francisco\u2019s eastbound 54 Felton line was heading up a narrow residential street when a white SUV coming the other way stopped in the middle of the road. It was a rainy Sunday evening last month, and the bus driver leaned up to the windshield and peered through the haze at<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":627645,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38067,3038,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-627644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dashcam","category-footage","category-technology"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}