The California Public Utilities Commission has allowed Cruise to expand driverless vehicles’ presence in San Francisco, but a day after its approval, Cruise had issues that halted traffic in the city.
A video circulating online shows at least five Cruise cars blocking traffic last Friday night in the North Beach neighborhood.
The driverless cars stopped in the middle of the road and blocked other vehicles from driving around the traffic.
Near Grant Avenue, at least six Cruise cars were seen causing traffic delays.
According to a Cruise spokesperson, the Cruise cars stopped because of “wireless connectivity issues.”
The vehicle company confirmed connectivity issues were linked to Outside Land, a three-day music festival.
“We are actively investigating and working on solutions to prevent this from happening again and apologize to those impacted,” Cruise said.
Mayor London Breed tweeted her thoughts about autonomous vehicles in the city. She is integrating them in San Francisco but acknowledged the issues that come with driverless vehicles.
The San Francisco Fire Department “strongly disagrees” with California Public Utilities Commission’s decision to expand driverless vehicles in the city.
The department released a statement below on Friday.
The Fire Department strongly disagrees with yesterday’s CPUC decision to allow commercial operations by the autonomous vehicle companies in San Francisco. We believe the ruling ignores public safety and emergency response interference that we presented to the Commission this week. The decision permits industry expansion without solving any of the underlying problems. We do not believe the industry has any incentive to remain at the table and solve their problems. These incidents with Public Safety are not going away and are in fact increasing. The Fire Department will continue to work with our Citypartners and the industry – if they remain willing – to improve the safety of the streets and community by improving the robotaxis ability to drive safely. The San Francisco Fire Department is not against modernization and new technologies but, any vehicle that endangers the people of the City and its visitors in danger and would put its passengers between a fire engine and a fire is not ready for prime time.
CAPTAIN JONATHAN BAXTER, SAN FRANCISCO FIRE DEPARTMENT