The day after California approved an expansion of driverless taxis, 10 of them came to a grinding halt on a busy San Francisco street, creating a gridlock that encompassed several blocks.
“Cell phones were overwhelmed, and as a result, they were not able to take control of these cars — which is a pretty frightening systemic defect,” Aaron Peskin, president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (SFBV), told As It Happens guest host Paul Hunter.
Both companies have repeatedly asserted their robotaxis are safer than human drivers, have not caused any deaths or life-threatening injuries over millions of collective kilometres driven and that real-world testing is critical to perfecting the technology.
“While we do not yet have the data to judge [autonomous vehicles] against the standard human drivers are setting, I do believe in the potential of this technology to increase safety on the roadway,” CPUC commissioner John Reynolds said in a press release.
“Collaboration between key stakeholders in the industry and the first responder community will be vital in resolving issues as they arise in this innovative, emerging technology space.”
What’s new, he said, is that Cruise, in a social media statement, blamed Friday’s glitches on “wireless bandwidth constraints” from the festival, which “delayed connectivity to our vehicles.”