Less than every week after California regulators opened the floodgates to driverless robotaxis in San Francisco, the town has requested for that rollout to be suspended.
In a movement Wednesday, San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu requested the California Public Utilities Commission — which oversees taxis and autonomous automobiles — to pause the enlargement whereas the town seeks a rehearing, citing security issues.
“When deploying powerful, new technology, safety should be the top priority,” Chiu mentioned in an announcement. “We have seen that this technology is not yet ready.”
Chiu mentioned the town “will suffer serious harms from this unfettered expansion, which outweigh whatever impacts [autonomous-vehicle] companies may experience from a minimal pause in commercial deployment. The city is simply requesting the CPUC preserve the status quo while it seeks rehearing.”
Autonomous vehicles from Waymo, a unit of Alphabet
GOOG,
GOOGL,
and GM
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subsidiary Cruise have turn into a ubiquitous sight on San Francisco streets, however their free robotaxi companies had been restricted to sure instances and neighborhoods.
Last Thursday, the CPUC accredited the limitless enlargement of Waymo and Cruise for-pay robotaxis throughout the complete metropolis, 24/7, regardless of issues from San Francisco officers, a lot of whom identified a rising variety of incidents involving the driverless vehicles blocking visitors and emergency automobiles.
Read extra: On the streets of San Francisco, will robotaxis run amok or aground?
Matters weren’t helped by a sequence of high-profile incidents previously week, as a cluster of Cruise vehicles froze and blocked visitors within the busy North Beach neighborhood Friday evening, and two different Cruises drove via development websites this week — one into moist concrete.
Last week’s choice “permits industry expansion without solving any of the underlying problems,” San Francisco Fire Chief Jeanine Nicholson mentioned in an announcement. “These incidents with public safety are not going away and are in fact increasing.”
Meanwhile, Waymo is reportedly set to begin charging for robotaxi rides in San Francisco on Monday.
Source web site: www.marketwatch.com
