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

This week, San Francisco's latest traffic accident involving a driverless car caught people's attention.

A pedestrian was thrown in front of a Cruise self-driving taxi and crushed after being hit by an ordinary car. He was trapped under the car for several minutes until firefighters rescued him and sent him to hospital.

The seriousness of this incident has once again thrown the commercial safety of unmanned vehicles to the forefront.

|The accident was restored, the human hit-and-run driver, the unmanned vehicle re-trapped, and the incident occurred at 9:30 p.m. local time on Monday at a busy intersection in downtown San Francisco.

In the bustling crowd, a GM Cruise self-driving taxi and another ordinary vehicle stopped side by side in front of a red light. When the traffic light turns green, both cars start moving forward.

A human driver in the left lane tries to accelerate through the intersection when an adult female pedestrian enters the road from the left. According to eyewitness accounts and video recorded by Cruise's internal cameras, she was first hit by a regular vehicle, flew over its front hood, landed on the roof, then fell down the right side, and finally was thrown into the street and landed in the lane where the driverless vehicle was advancing.

The unmanned vehicle failed to dodge in time and ran over pedestrians. At the same time, something was detected under the rear axle, emergency braking was immediately applied and the hazard light was turned on, which also caused the pedestrian to be trapped under the vehicle.

San Francisco police and firefighters arrived and used the jaws to rescue the pedestrian from the car and take him to the hospital. According to the fire department, the woman was "in critical condition with multiple injuries."

Accident rescue scene, picture from San Francisco Fire Department At the time of the crash, there were no passengers in the unmanned taxi. Cruise immediately disabled the vehicle remotely, stopped in place and cooperated with the police investigation with the arriving operator. the driver responsible for the first collision fled the scene.

A San Francisco Police Department spokesman said in a statement that another non-autonomous car should have initially caused the accident and was currently soliciting clues from the community about the escape driver.

Cruise quickly responded on social media platform X, tracing the entire incident and writing: "Cruise immediately applied positive brakes to reduce the impact of the collision after capturing pedestrian images and stayed in place to cooperate with the investigation as required by the police,""Our most sincere concern and concern is the health of the injured, and Cruise is actively working with the police to help identify the driver responsible. "

Cruise's response to this incident, picture from X| In fact, this is not the first time that an unmanned vehicle has been involved in a controversial traffic incident.

On August 10, after a six-hour hearing, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) voted 3 - 1 to approve Waymo and Cruise to operate driverless taxi services in downtown San Francisco 24/7 without safety officers, marking the first time Robotaxi has been officially licensed to operate commercially in the United States.

The night after getting the license plate, as many as ten Cruise driverless cars suddenly stalled on Vallejo Street in North Beach, San Francisco, due to wireless connectivity problems, causing traffic jams for at least 15 minutes.

Witnesses wrote on Social networks: "Human cars are blocked behind unmanned vehicles. They are motionless like boulders. No one knows how to move them. "

On Aug. 15, a Cruise unmanned taxi mistakenly drove into a paving construction site, with its front wheels stuck in dry concrete and unable to move.

Just three days later, a Cruise Robotaxi carrying passengers collided with a fire truck on its way to the scene of the fire, causing passengers to be taken to hospital with minor injuries. Cruise said the taxi entered the intersection when the green light was on, but did not give way to the fire truck with warning lights and sirens in time. Although "the danger of collision was indeed detected, braking measures were activated and the speed was reduced, but the collision was not avoided in the end."

The incident also triggered the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to order Cruise to immediately reduce its fleet by 50%, and to operate no more than 50 driverless vehicles during the day and no more than 150 at night until the agency completes its investigation.

A netizen posted on X that a Cruise unmanned vehicle driving in front of him suddenly braked when it was ready to turn left, almost causing danger. The frequent safety accidents and uncertainties of copyright belong to the original author, which also make many local people worry about the commercial operation of unmanned taxis, especially in emergency situations, whether unmanned taxis can accurately identify and respond to the surrounding environment and make correct judgments.

Opponents staged marches to protest the expansion of driverless cars. There's even a group called Safe Street Rebel that opposes driverless taxis, encouraging people to place a simple orange cone on the hood of an empty Robotaxi to disrupt the vehicle's location system and disable it. As information went viral online, Cruise and Waymo said solemnly that they would call the police as soon as they were found.

A Waymo unmanned vehicle is coned by opponents. Photo from San Francisco Chronicle| From research and development to the road, the commercial road of unmanned vehicles has gone on for more than ten years, and the operation of unmanned vehicles faces many challenges, and this commercial road is not easy.

Currently, the driverless taxis on San Francisco roads come from two industry leaders: Waymo, owned by Google parent Alphabet, and Cruise, owned by General Motors. From technology research and development, continuous iteration, capital winter, burning money operation, adjustment testing, and finally commercialization landing, both have been on the autonomous driving track for more than ten years.

Waymo started as an X lab autonomous driving project launched internally by Google in 2009 and was separated and renamed in 2016 due to architectural adjustments, named after "a new approach to mobility."

In October 2017, Waymo began driving tests without safety officers on Arizona public roads. Over the next few years, the company continued to advance technology, including developing low-cost sensors and cameras, and switching to self-produced lidar, which reduced costs by nearly 90%. Waymo applies these technologies to a variety of vehicles, including Prius, Audi, and Lexus, while also working with Lyft on pilot projects and product development.

From March to May 2020, Waymo announced $2.5 billion and $750 million in financing, including Silver Lake, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Mubadala Investment, parts giant Magna, Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and Google parent company Alphabet.

In July 2020, the company announced an exclusive partnership with automaker Volvo to integrate Waymo technology into Volvo's truck services.

In 2021, Waymo raised another $2.5 billion. Consumer testing programs were then rolled out to residents of San Francisco and Phoenix, Arizona. CPUC allows it to operate on limited operating hours, speeds and sections with a safe driver in the vehicle. It is not allowed to operate in foggy and heavy rain conditions.

On December 13, 2022, Waymo applied to California for a final license to fully operate fully autonomous taxis without safety officers, and was finally approved in August this year.

Cruise, which was founded in San Francisco in 2013, initially focused on developing direct-to-consumer kits for retrofitting limited autonomous vehicles. In 2015, Cruise changed its strategy and began developing driverless cars. After being successfully incubated by YC, it was acquired by General Motors in 2016. At present, it has accumulated more than US $6 billion in financing from Softbank, Microsoft, GM and Honda, with a valuation of US $30 billion.

In June 2022, Cruise received California's first driverless license, allowing it to operate under limited conditions and charge passengers for services. And in August this year, together with Waymo, it was approved to officially operate 24/7 in downtown San Francisco. Cruise said it operates about 300 vehicles in San Francisco at night and about 100 during the day, while Waymo announced that it has 250 robot taxis in operation.

|People's voices are different. Which side are you on this time? For the traffic accident involved in this Cruise, there are also a lot of voices supporting the unmanned vehicle side. Many people think it is actually an extreme case: human drivers hit pedestrians first and escape, causing autonomous taxis to be involved.

After watching the surveillance video captured by Cruise, many netizens said that the unmanned vehicle was not the initial fault party, but the uncertainty and risk factor of human drivers were higher. Although unmanned vehicles did stop on pedestrians because they didn't have time to brake, if every car was equipped with safety features enhanced by artificial intelligence technology, this tragedy might not have happened at all."This is why we need more unmanned vehicles."

But the event comes at a critical time: Cruise is trying to expand its driverless taxi operation in San Francisco and is preparing to begin testing and eventually charging in more than a dozen cities across the United States. We don't know yet whether this setback will affect its market expansion plans. San Francisco is densely populated and has a sloping and complex terrain. As an experimental field for the commercial operation of unmanned vehicles, it has reference significance for the United States and even the whole world.

As of now, the pedestrian is still in hospital and is not out of danger. We pray for the injured.

This article comes from Weixin Official Accounts: Silicon Star Pro (ID: gh_c0bb185caa8d), by Jessica

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