Robotaxi Gets Stuck in Wet Concrete

Automologist MAC is just little bit pleased…

Poor Baby…

The age of autonomous or self-driving vehicles is just around the corner, apparently, despite all of the mayhem they have caused around the world, particularly in California where a lot of them are being tested—everything from stopping the fire brigade from doing their jobs to running people over. Now, in a case which brings out the schadenfreude in me, one has managed to get stuck in wet cement.

A driverless Cruise robotaxi, which was fortunately unoccupied at the time, came to an abrupt halt on the Golden Gate Avenue in downtown San Francisco. This somewhat slapstick and very hilarious accident does highlight just how much development work is still required before the somewhat dim-witted vehicles can safely co-exist with the humans they want to transport.

There are so many other potential problems that could happen, but Waymo and Cruise are steadfast in their claims that robotaxis are inherently safer than human drivers and make far fewer mistakes. At least that is how they justify them. More probably, the reason that a driverless taxi is even being mooted comes down to an attempt to change the very landscape of personal travel and car ownership to one in which only the very rich can own a vehicle; the rest of us mere mortals will have to use an app to summon a car.

This news comes hard on the heels of a city-wide traffic jam in San Francisco cause by Cruise self-driving cars shutting down across the Bay Area due to “wireless bandwidth constraints”, as the company called it, triggered by a local festival.

Unfortunately for the inhabitants of San Francisco, these events my increase as the California Public Utilities Commission just voted to allow them to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the first in the States to allow this. Despite the issues, the service seems popular; according to Waymo, they have a waiting list of over 100,000 customers who want to sign up to their app.

Poor little Cruise robotaxis. They don’t have a brain and cannot possibly tell it is wet cement but, hey, that could never happen to me or you right?