The future of mobility sure seems dumb.
A few years ago just about every big player in the autonomous driving sector assured everyone, especially deep-pocketed investors, that fully self-driving cars would be a reality by 2020. In case you aren’t keep track, and we absolute are, three years later we’re not anywhere near achieving that goal. One wonderful example of how stupid the robotaxis in San Francisco went down on the night of August 11 when ten of them caused a big traffic jam.
Maybe the robotaxis should watch this video?
According to local news station KGO, ten Cruise autonomous cars just stopped in the middle of traffic on a busy road in San Francisco on a Friday night. After about 20 minutes they started driving again, but by then traffic was snarled and people were furious.
Cruise, which was started by GM and absolutely is going to revolutionize how everyone gets around, blamed the incident on the Outside Lands music festival which was going on that night. The company claims that all the festival goers were using their phones too much, chewing up bandwidth so the robotaxis couldn’t connect to the cloud and drive.
This seems like a design flaw, to be honest. After all, loss of connectivity happens as everyone who owns and uses a smartphone on the go knows all too well. If autonomous cars need to maintain a data connection to work, there are going to be times when they just won’t drive.
If there’s an emergency like a natural disaster, robotaxis not only will be useless, they could block people trying to escape. So why are they hailed as some method to achieve a utopian society?
Plus, people in San Francisco are tired of dealing with all the autonomous cars running around the city.
That’s right, the wondrous technology that was supposed to show how humans are so dumb and can’t drive right have been causing all kinds of trouble in San Francisco. One ran over a small dog. Others have stopped and refused to move for no apparent reason. People there are so sick of the robotaxis they’re sabotaging them in hopes they can be removed. Can’t you just wait for them to roam around in your hometown?
Images via Twitter
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