Are robotaxis the future? Or instead, the past?
Are robotaxis the future? Or instead, the past?
All the robotaxi companies claim that their safety is much better than obsolete human drivers. But are they really safer given that they seem to crash so often? This clearly needs to be investigated further.
The NHTSA writes a rather direct and nasty letter to robotaxi companies telling them to get their act together and stop interfering with emergency responders.
SF Chronicle reports that a couple of wayward teens managed to ride in a Waymo unaccompanied, which is not legal in California. Drinking, shooting of projectiles, and general hilarity ensued.
SF Standard reports on how once again Waymo vehicles are incompetent at driving and cause complete traffic chaos.
The Independent reports on how a Tesla using FSD was tested for 100 days and experienced more than 500 safety-critical events that requred driver intervention or revealed an important limitation.
Business Insider reports that the DOT will likely grant robotaxi companies the ability to use an unlimited number of vehicles that cannot be driven by a human. But there is a big problem. When the robotaxi goes haywire and blocks traffic then an emergency responder will not be able to drive the vehicle so that it is out of the way.
Reuters reports that Tesla has once again exaggerated its safety claims creating “an urgent safety problem.” So why is FSD still allowed to be used on our public streets?
SF Chronicle reports that Waymos aren't content to have seriously injured a bicyclist in San Francisco due to not following the traffic laws. Now they appear to park in bike lanes in a regular basis.
CNN investigated the safety of Waymo robotaxis and found that while in some ways they drive more safely than humans, in other ways they introduce whole new safety problems.
NY Times reports on how Waymo robotaxis do really dumb things when encountering flooded streets. They drive in and any passengers are then stuck!
SF Standard reports that once again Waymo offers service and then has to rescind it because it wasn't at all safe. This time it turns out that Waymos have been suspended from all freeways and from any flooded roadways. Sure would have been nice if they knew of these problems before inflicting them onto the public.
Findings provides a report on how half the Waymo miles are void of passengers, simply increasing congestion.
TechCrunch reports that Tesla robotaxis go crashy crashy. And this happened while a teleoperator was remotely driving the vehicles!
SF Chronicle conducted a poll and found that only 42% consider the robotaxis to be a "good thing". Meanwhile, Brad Templeton does a really weird and inappropriate comparison to acceptance of elevators.
The San Antonio Express News reports that Waymo vehicles were programmed to drive onto flooded roads. This poor decision caused one of the Waymo vehicles to wash downstream. Now Waymo is updating the software on all their 3,800 vehicles to avoid this really stupid idea.
TechCrunch reports that the NHTSA is investigating Avride, a partner of Uber, after identifying 16 crashes. Looks like Uber doesn't have a robotaxi solution after all.
