The driverless Chevy Bolt clearly didn’t understand that what it was driving into was about to stop it dead in its tracks
2 hours ago
A Cruise autonomous vehicle found itself buried down to its battery pack after driving into wet cement recently. The company has since recovered its wayward automobile but that hasn’t quieted the ire of at least one local resident.
Sometime during August 15th, a Chevrolet Bolt operated by Cruise drove itself into wet concrete near Fillmore and Steiner streets on Golden Gate Avenue in San Francisco. Reports suggest that it was passengerless at the time of the incident. Evidently, nobody was injured either. Of course, Cruise’s reputation might have taken a bit of a hit.
One local, Paul Harvey, expressed his dismay with the autonomous vehicles. “I can see five different scenarios where bad things happen and this is one of them,” Harvey told SFGATE. “It thinks it’s a road and it ain’t because it ain’t got a brain and it can’t tell that it’s freshly poured concrete.”
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Cruise confirmed in a tweet that not only did it already know about the situation but that it had already recovered the car too: “One of our AVs drove into a construction area and stopped in wet concrete. This vehicle has already been recovered and we’re in communication with the city about this.”
This is only the latest foible that a Cruise autonomous vehicle has run up against. Citizens have reported numerous traffic jams incited by groups of the cars. One had to pull over for a police officer because it had its headlights off.
Some have blocked intersections for protracted periods of time. Others have blocked emergency vehicles and at least one accidentally hit the back of a bendy bus. In each situation, it seems that a real human driver would’ve probably had a better reaction.