A few days after Cruise received a permit to operate robotaxis around the clock in San Francisco, one of its vehicles got stuck in wet cement, SFGate reports.
Paul Harvey, a San Francisco resident who lives in the area, told SFGATE that he saw a car stuck at a construction site on Golden Gate Avenue between Fillmore and Steiner streets. There were no passengers in the car.
“I see five different scenarios where bad things happen, and this is one of them,” Harvey told SFGATE. “He thinks it’s a road, but it’s not, because he has no brains and can’t see that it’s freshly poured concrete.”
Later, he saw people pulling the car onto the road. A representative of Cruise confirmed to SFGATE that employees of the company that owns the cars pulled the car out of the concrete and have since returned it to its place.
Although he is skeptical of self-driving cars, Harvey recognized one of the key marketing points that Cruise and Waymo raised in the days leading up to the vote: Human drivers are fallible.
“When the traffic light turns green, I just don’t press the gas pedal,” he said. “I look left and right for some idiot to run the light. And it does happen.”
But he is still skeptical about autonomous cars, which he calls “scary.”
Hi @Name_Is_Nobody – 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.
— cruise (@Cruise) August 15, 2023
