Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, Aug. 15 (Xinhua)-- San Francisco residents were hit by a traffic jam caused by a Cruise self-driving car over the weekend, a day after California regulators approved driverless taxi companies to operate 24 hours a day, according to social media site X (formerly Twitter).

CTOnews.com noted that videos posted on X showed that at least 10 Cruise cars in the Beitan community were unable to move near the Outside Lands music festival, blocking the intersection and flashing danger warning lights. Witnesses said driverless cars were blocked at the intersection for about 15 minutes on Friday night, raising concerns that driverless cars could prevent emergency vehicles from entering the area.

Cruise responded on X that the festival "caused wireless bandwidth restrictions and led to delays in our vehicle connections". The company said it was "actively investigating and looking for solutions to prevent this from happening again" and apologized to those affected.

Cruise says its vehicles already have more than 4 million self-driving miles and currently have more than 1 million self-driving miles per month.

"they have deployed hundreds of cars on our streets," said Aaron Peskin, chairman of the San Francisco supervisory board. "they should pause and stop until they improve the technology." Peskin is also worried that if this happens again, there will be an emergency. "our house in North Beach is made of wood." He said he was "looking for ways" to get the state government to reverse the decision and may seek a court injunction.

The incident came a day after the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), the state's regulator of self-driving cars, voted 3-1 in favor of Waymo and Cruise to expand their operations, allowing their self-driving cars to operate 24 hours a day across the city. Cruise spokesman Drew Pusateri previously said the 24-hour self-driving service was a "historic industry milestone" that put Cruise "in a position to compete with traditional ride-hailing and challenge the unsafe and unreachable traffic situation".

Despite the approval of the state government, local officials also expressed their opposition. The San Francisco Police Association, the San Francisco Deputy Sheriff's Association and the San Francisco firefighters Association all wrote to CPUC expressing concerns that self-driving cars might interfere with emergency services.

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.