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“But I don’t want something bad to happen because we can’t get to a scene. Nicholson acknowledged that no one has yet been killed or injured due to robotaxi misbehavior. We believe this transparency benefits our riders - who are enjoying a safe, accessible, and delightful mobility option tens of thousands of times per week - and encourages a richer conversation about safety in the industry.” Waymo issued a prepared statement: “Safety is at the heart of our mission and we have consistently shared more detail than any other company regarding our methodologies and insights into our performance. While regulators investigate a spate of Teslas steering themselves into parked vehicles, Tesla owners have been reporting faulty collision-avoidance systems. Interacting properly with emergency personnel is important to us, which is why we maintain an open line of communication with first responders to receive feedback and discuss specific incidents to improve our response.”īusiness A Tesla mystery: Why didn’t auto-braking stop these crashes? Hannah Lindow, spokesperson for Cruise, said the company is “proud of our publicly reported safety record which includes driving millions of miles in an extremely complex urban environment. We don’t have the time to personally take care of a car that’s in the way when we’re on the way to an emergency,” she said.
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The fire chief said each robotaxi company offers training to help deal with “bricked” vehicles. In one case, a firefighter had to smash through a window to coax a robotaxi to move out of the way.
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If that proves impossible, the robotaxi company must dispatch a human to the scene.
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To deal with a troublesome robotaxi, firefighters attempt to communicate with a remote robotaxi operator, who sometimes can move the car out of the way. Another lane was open, but in a news release, the Fire Department said on a narrower street, the blockage could have been “catastrophic.”
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Sometimes these robo-roadblocks are brief, but sometimes the road obstructions last long enough to require a robotaxi company employee to travel to the scene and move the car out of the way. 1, the Fire Department has logged at least 39 robotaxi incident reports.Īlthough, as the driverless industry notes, robot cars don’t get tired, don’t drive drunk or high, and aren’t distracted by their iPhones, they do often stop dead in traffic for no apparent reason. State regulators track robotaxi collisions, but they don’t track data on traffic flow issues, such as street blockages or interference with firetrucks.īut the Fire Department does. San Francisco officials want to delay a vote on robotaxi expansion while issues with emergency vehicles are sorted out. Business San Francisco police back the fire chief’s complaint about robotaxis interfering with first responders
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