Cars

‘It’s everyone’s nightmare — the robot doesn’t stop’: Tesla recall and robotaxi crash throw self-driving car dream into crisis

It seemed like the ultimate tech dream.

Want to go out to dinner? Order a robotaxi. Roadtrip? Hop in your Tesla, don’t worry, it will drive for you.

But now the mixture of science fiction and marketing boosterism has collided with reality — and some in the car industry believe the dream will be stuck in the garage for a long time to come.

Last week virtually every Tesla on the road was recalled over regulators’ concerns that its “Autopilot” system is unsafe, part of a years-long National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigation into Elon Musk’s cars.

Musk had been the biggest public booster of the idea of the car doing the driving, first promising immediate “full self-driving” in 2016.

The Autopilot system allows Teslas to self-steer, accelerate and brake, but needs a driver in the front seat. Tesla is updating the software but says the system is safe.

Panini, the Cruise AV which dragged a woman 20ft to the curb under its wheels, was inspected by police after the crash. But now the whole future of the driverless car dream is in crisis. FOX KTVU
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been a booster of the driverless dream, but the promise of “full self-driving” has yet to be reached — seven years after he first made it. Now almost every Tesla in the US is being recalled over “Autopilot” mode. REUTERS

Tesla has not gone as far as others, which have launched live trials on city streets of cars with empty driving seats, among them GM’s subsidiary Cruise; Google’s Waymo unit; Volkswagen ADMT; Subaru; and Uber.

But a hair-raising crash in San Francisco on Oct. 2 involving a Cruise AV called Panini — a driverless Chevy Bolt — has thrown the “autonomous vehicle” project into crisis.

It started when a woman was hit by a normal car on the city’s Market St. and thrown into Panini’s path, ending up literally sandwiched under it.

Panini stopped — but incredibly, then restarted and dragged her for 20 feet towards the curb at 7mph. Firefighters had to use the jaws of life to free her.

The driver of this 2018 Tesla Model S said it crashed when he engaged Autopilot while he was on the Capital Beltway around Washington, DC, in March. via REUTERS
The woman found under Panini the Cruise AV on Market St. in San Francisco had to be removed with the jaws of life by firefighters. She survived but was seriously injured and has not been named. via REUTERS

On its own, it might have been dismissed as an error.

But it was just the latest in a long run of crashes, injuries and death in states which have allowed driverless trials.

This year alone, self-driving cars crashed 128 times in California; one Cruise AV hit a firetruck; another hit a bus; a Waymo car delayed a firefighter rushing to a 911 call by seven minutes; a Cruise Origin embedded itself in a building in Austin, Tex., then couldn’t be moved because it didn’t have a steering wheel; and in San Francisco a Waymo car killed a dog while a Cruise AV got stuck in wet concrete.

Now industry analysts warn there’s no way AV manufacturers can quickly convince the public that driverless transportation is safe.

The Market St. crash in San Francisco started in the middle of the road but the Cruise AV started moving and only stopped when it reached the curb, which was what it was programmed to do — even with an injured person underneath. KTVU
Panini’s crash was not the only misadventure for the fleet of Cruises. In August one managed to crash into a San Francisco firetruck. A passenger was injured and taken to the hospital. KPIX

James Meigs, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and former editor-in-chief of Popular Mechanics, said Panini’s San Francisco crash shows autonomous vehicles — “AVs” — aren’t “ready for the wild.”

“It’s kind of like everyone’s nightmare — you know, the robot doesn’t stop,” Meigs told The Post.

The issue isn’t that autonomous cars are objectively more unsafe than regular ones. They can’t be impaired by drink and drugs — up to half the drivers in serious or fatal crashes are, a federal study found — and they have not killed anything close to the 42,795 lives claimed by cars in 2022 in the US.

A Tesla Model S while operating in “autopilot” mode,” a driver-assistance system linked to 736 crashes since 2019, including 17 fatalities, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data cited by the Washington Post. REUTERS

In fact, said Jason Stein, former publisher of industry bible Automotive News and host of podcast “Cars & Culture with Jason Stein,” they’re far safer than putting a human behind the wheel.

“Humans might not like to hear it, but the technology that’s come out in the last decade is far superior to anything humankind could ever accomplish with driver training,” Stein said.

“That doesn’t mean today’s drivers trust it any more, but one day we may look back and wonder why we ever let anyone on the road in the first place.”

The real crisis is in making humans trust the tech — something Cruise appears to have failed to do.

Cruise’s CEO Ken Vogt (left) lost his job in the wake of the company having its permits to operate in California suspended. Oliver Cameron (right) had quite six months before. All the San Francisco cars were given cutesy names. @Cruise/X

After Panini’s crash, executives at Cruise, California’s DMV alleged, only showed officials video of the first part of the accident, during which it stopped — not the segment when it restarted and dragged the woman.

The DMV suspended Cruise’s licenses to operate in California on Oct. 24 and is now considering a $1.5m fine and more sanctions.

As a result, GM put the 950-strong Cruise robotaxi fleet, also found in Austin and Houston, in park. It called off preparatory work in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Diego, and forced out the CEO Kyle Vogt in November.

Last week it fired nine top leaders and 900 workers, a quarter of its staff.

Mary Barra, the CEO of GM, has placed a big bet on the success of Cruise, which converted versions of the Chevy Bolt which she is standing in front of, into autonomous vehicles for their robotaxi fleet. Getty Images

Cruise was a cross of Silicon Valley’s “move fast and break things” culture and Detroit’s marketing genius: GM bought the West Coast start-up in 2016 for more than $1 billion and its CEO Mary Barra called her first driverless ride through San Francisco in 2022 “surreal.” 

GM, Honda, Microsoft, Softbank and Walmart pumped in $10 billion and Cruise pumped out good news — even when Panini crashed.

It said its reaction time of 460 milliseconds, was “faster than most human drivers,” but then had to admit that Panini dragged the crash victim because its human programmers had told it to move to the curb after any impact.

Professor Krzysztof Czarnecki, who leads the Intelligent Systems Engineering Lab at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, told The Post that programming a car to move after hitting a pedestrian was a basic error.

This was another Cruise AV, called Soufflé, which ran into a city bus in March, one of a string of crashes. @bauer/X
GM had believed that it was succeeding in San Francisco and had overcome crashes before in the budy city streets. But Panini’s crash set off a crisis which raises questions over whether robotaxis really can work safely. Getty Images

“The need to be extra cautious after hitting a pedestrian – such as considering the possibility of them being under the car – should come up during even a simple brainstorming exercise of a safety engineering team,” he said. 

“Even my students pointed this out to me. Failure to do so indicates that not enough attention was given to safety engineering.”

The lack of a “strong safety culture” within some automated driving companies like Cruise is the primary issue plaguing the burgeoning industry, Czarnecki alleged.

Uber abandoned its attempt at robotaxis entirely in 2020 after its autonomous Volvo killed a woman in Arizona in 2018, prompting damning allegations of an “inadequate safety culture” by the National Transportation Safety Board.

Uber abandoned its robotaxi experiment after a 2018 crash in Arizona. Internal cameras captured the reaction of the worker who was supposed to monitor for errors as the Volvo XC90 hit a woman pushing her bike across a road at night. REUTERS
This was the aftermath of Elaine Herzberg, 49,being killed by one of Uber’s self-driving Volvos in Tempe, AZ. The killing eventually led to Uber quitting the race for autonomous cars completely. Tempe Police Department

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is now probing Cruise, not just over Panini, but three other incidents — one of which involved another pedestrian being injured.

“To save themselves, Cruise needs to radically rethink its approach to safety,” Czarnecki said, adding the company could publish all its internal data.

Google’s Waymo subsidiary, in contrast to Cruise, has a “strong safety record,” thanks to researchers who publish automated driving data, unlike other AV companies, according to Czarnecki.

Undeterred by Cruise’s troubles, Waymo is still offering driverless taxi rides in San Francisco, Phoenix and Los Angeles County, with Austin coming soon.

Uber suspended its driverless program in Arizona following the fatal 2018 wreck. It got out of the business entirely two years later after allegations from regulators of serious safety failings. Tempe Police Department
Walmart was among other investors who put have put money into GM’s Cruise division, betting that their businesses can benefit from autonomous vehicles and robotaxis. Now Cruise’s experiment is on hold after Panini’s crash. Source: Cruise

The company is testing operations in Buffalo, New York, to improve performance in the snow — although it does not plan robotaxis there, spokeswoman Katherine Barna said.

Waymo’s fleet of electric Jaguar I-PACEs operate with “fully autonomous technology,” with 29 cameras, and detailed custom maps with real-time sensor data to determine its exact location.

On the roof is the “lidar” — light detection and ranging — system and the computing unit, its size hinting at the sheer amount of processing power needed to drive on city streets.

But Waymo, which launched in 2009, has no current plans to tackle the US’s toughest streets, those of New York City, Barna said.

As many as 250 Waymo AVs, converted electric Jaguars, are offering rides in San Francisco, where Google started testing driverless technology in 2009 using Toyota Prius models along 100-mile routes. Source: Waymo
This is what the passengers sees from the back of a Waymo Jaguar I-PACE. It is also operating, since May, in greater Phoenix and Scottsdale, Arizona, a 180 square mile zone which is the world’s largest robotaxi service area worldwide.

Experts said the ability of machines to safely react to countless variables on crammed roads is improving exponentially, in part due to advances in artificial intelligence.

But pedestrians darting into crosswalks, abrupt traffic changes or even wayward animals pose unique hurdles for the programmers, said Jonathan Hill, dean of Pace University’s Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems.

“You know, you have millions and millions and millions of exceptions – and that gets really tough to test for,” Hill said. “A decade into testing these vehicles and there’s still problems. They’re still cars, they’re not perfect machines.”

Hill predicts that the growing power of artificial intelligence will lead to relatively accident-free self-driving cars becoming available in some US cities within 12 to 18 months, but cautioned that the industry is not trusted by the people it wants to use them.

Cruise AVs are now in permanent park in San Francisco, while the CEO Kyle Vogt is out after the Panini crash. REUTERS

“Science being up to the task is one thing, but human acceptance is another,” Hill said.

The problem which is perplexing the driverless car movement most of all is how to get Americans to believe in them — when the idea itself is basically un-American, said Stein.

“What happens in the case of autonomous vehicles is you’re turning freedom or the decision-making ability over to something else that you don’t quite trust yet,” Stein told The Post.

“And it’s not on your terms; it’s on the terms of the microchip in the vehicle. I think that runs against the grain of the American philosophy and American freedom.

“Americans want to control freedom on their own terms.”

universo-virtual.com
buytrendz.net
thisforall.net
benchpressgains.com
qthzb.com
mindhunter9.com
dwjqp1.com
secure-signup.net
ahaayy.com
soxtry.com
tressesindia.com
puresybian.com
krpano-chs.com
cre8workshop.com
hdkino.org
peixun021.com
qz786.com
utahperformingartscenter.org
maw-pr.com
zaaksen.com
ypxsptbfd7.com
worldqrmconference.com
shangyuwh.com
eejssdfsdfdfjsd.com
playminecraftfreeonline.com
trekvietnamtour.com
your-business-articles.com
essaywritingservice10.com
hindusamaaj.com
joggingvideo.com
wandercoups.com
onlinenewsofindia.com
worldgraphic-team.com
bnsrz.com
wormblaster.net
tongchengchuyange0004.com
internetknowing.com
breachurch.com
peachesnginburlesque.com
dataarchitectoo.com
clientfunnelformula.com
30pps.com
cherylroll.com
ks2252.com
webmanicura.com
osostore.com
softsmob.com
sofietsshotel.com
facetorch.com
nylawyerreview.com
apapromotions.com
shareparelli.com
goeaglepointe.com
thegreenmanpubphuket.com
karotorossian.com
publicsensor.com
taiwandefence.com
epcsur.com
odskc.com
inzziln.info
leaiiln.info
cq-oa.com
dqtianshun.com
southstills.com
tvtv98.com
thewellington-hotel.com
bccaipiao.com
colectoresindustrialesgs.com
shenanddcg.com
capriartfilmfestival.com
replicabreitlingsale.com
thaiamarinnewtoncorner.com
gkmcww.com
mbnkbj.com
andrewbrennandesign.com
cod54.com
luobinzhang.com
bartoysdirect.com
taquerialoscompadresdc.com
aaoodln.info
amcckln.info
drvrnln.info
dwabmln.info
fcsjoln.info
hlonxln.info
kcmeiln.info
kplrrln.info
fatcatoons.com
91guoys.com
signupforfreehosting.com
faithfirst.net
zjyc28.com
tongchengjinyeyouyue0004.com
nhuan6.com
oldgardensflowers.com
lightupthefloor.com
bahamamamas-stjohns.com
ly2818.com
905onthebay.com
fonemenu.com
notanothermovie.com
ukrainehighclassescort.com
meincmagazine.com
av-5858.com
yallerdawg.com
donkeythemovie.com
corporatehospitalitygroup.com
boboyy88.com
miteinander-lernen.com
dannayconsulting.com
officialtomsshoesoutletstore.com
forsale-amoxil-amoxicillin.net
generictadalafil-canada.net
guitarlessonseastlondon.com
lesliesrestaurants.com
mattyno9.com
nri-homeloans.com
rtgvisas-qatar.com
salbutamolventolinonline.net
sportsinjuries.info
topsedu.xyz
xmxm7.com
x332.xyz
sportstrainingblog.com
autopartspares.com
readguy.net
soniasegreto.com
bobbygdavis.com
wedsna.com
rgkntk.com
bkkmarketplace.com
zxqcwx.com
breakupprogram.com
boxcardc.com
unblockyoutubeindonesia.com
fabulousbookmark.com
beat-the.com
guatemala-sailfishing-vacations-charters.com
magie-marketing.com
kingstonliteracy.com
guitaraffinity.com
eurelookinggoodapparel.com
howtolosecheekfat.net
marioncma.org
oliviadavismusic.com
shantelcampbellrealestate.com
shopleborn13.com
topindiafree.com
v-visitors.net
qazwsxedcokmijn.com
parabis.net
terriesandelin.com
luxuryhomme.com
studyexpanse.com
ronoom.com
djjky.com
053hh.com
originbluei.com
baucishotel.com
33kkn.com
intrinsiqresearch.com
mariaescort-kiev.com
mymaguk.com
sponsored4u.com
crimsonclass.com
bataillenavale.com
searchtile.com
ze-stribrnych-struh.com
zenithalhype.com
modalpkv.com
bouisset-lafforgue.com
useupload.com
37r.net
autoankauf-muenster.com
bantinbongda.net
bilgius.com
brabustermagazine.com
indigrow.org
miicrosofts.net
mysmiletravel.com
selinasims.com
spellcubesapp.com
usa-faction.com
snn01.com
hope-kelley.com
bancodeprofissionais.com
zjccp99.com
liturgycreator.com
weedsmj.com
majorelenco.com
colcollect.com
androidnews-jp.com
hypoallergenicdogsnames.com
dailyupdatez.com
foodphotographyreviews.com
cricutcom-setup.com
chprowebdesign.com
katyrealty-kanepa.com
tasramar.com
bilgipinari.org
four-am.com
indiarepublicday.com
inquick-enbooks.com
iracmpi.com
kakaschoenen.com
lsm99flash.com
nana1255.com
ngen-niagara.com
technwzs.com
virtualonlinecasino1345.com
wallpapertop.net
nova-click.com
abeautifulcrazylife.com
diggmobile.com
denochemexicana.com
eventhalfkg.com
medcon-taiwan.com
life-himawari.com
myriamshomes.com
nightmarevue.com
allstarsru.com
bestofthebuckeyestate.com
bestofthefirststate.com
bestwireless7.com
declarationintermittent.com
findhereall.com
jingyou888.com
lsm99deal.com
lsm99galaxy.com
moozatech.com
nuagh.com
patliyo.com
philomenamagikz.net
rckouba.net
saturnunipessoallda.com
tallahasseefrolics.com
thematurehardcore.net
totalenvironment-inthatquietearth.com
velislavakaymakanova.com
vermontenergetic.com
sizam-design.com
kakakpintar.com
begorgeouslady.com
1800birks4u.com
2wheelstogo.com
6strip4you.com
bigdata-world.net
emailandco.net
gacapal.com
jharpost.com
krishnaastro.com
lsm99credit.com
mascalzonicampani.com
sitemapxml.org
thecityslums.net
topagh.com
flairnetwebdesign.com
bangkaeair.com
beneventocoupon.com
noternet.org
oqtive.com
smilebrightrx.com
decollage-etiquette.com
1millionbestdownloads.com
7658.info
bidbass.com
devlopworldtech.com
digitalmarketingrajkot.com
fluginfo.net
naqlafshk.com
passion-decouverte.com
playsirius.com
spacceleratorintl.com
stikyballs.com
top10way.com
yokidsyogurt.com
zszyhl.com
16firthcrescent.com
abogadolaboralistamd.com
apk2wap.com
aromacremeria.com
banparacard.com
bosmanraws.com
businessproviderblog.com
caltonosa.com
calvaryrevivalchurch.org
chastenedsoulwithabrokenheart.com
cheminotsgardcevennes.com
cooksspot.com
cqxzpt.com
deesywig.com
deltacartoonmaps.com
despixelsetdeshommes.com
duocoracaobrasileiro.com
fareshopbd.com
goodpainspills.com
kobisitecdn.com
makaigoods.com
mgs1454.com
piccadillyresidences.com
radiolaondafresca.com
rubendorf.com
searchengineimprov.com
sellmyhrvahome.com
shugahouseessentials.com
sonihullquad.com
subtractkilos.com
valeriekelmansky.com
vipasdigitalmarketing.com
voolivrerj.com
zeelonggroup.com
1015southrockhill.com
10x10b.com
111-online-casinos.com
191cb.com
3665arpentunitd.com
aitesonics.com
bag-shokunin.com
brightotech.com
communication-digitale-services.com
covoakland.org
dariaprimapack.com
freefortniteaccountss.com
gatebizglobal.com
global1entertainmentnews.com
greatytene.com
hiroshiwakita.com
iktodaypk.com
jahatsakong.com
meadowbrookgolfgroup.com
newsbharati.net
platinumstudiosdesign.com
slotxogamesplay.com
strikestaruk.com
trucosdefortnite.com
ufabetrune.com
weddedtowhitmore.com
12940brycecanyonunitb.com
1311dietrichoaks.com
2monarchtraceunit303.com
601legendhill.com
850elaine.com
adieusolasomade.com
andora-ke.com
bestslotxogames.com
cannagomcallen.com
endlesslyhot.com
iestpjva.com
ouqprint.com
pwmaplefest.com
qtylmr.com
rb88betting.com
buscadogues.com
1007macfm.com
born-wild.com
growthinvests.com
promocode-casino.com
proyectogalgoargentina.com
wbthompson-art.com
whitemountainwheels.com
7thavehvl.com
developmethis.com
funkydogbowties.com
travelodgegrandjunction.com
gao-town.com
globalmarketsuite.com
blogshippo.com
hdbka.com
proboards67.com
outletonline-michaelkors.com
kalkis-research.com
thuthuatit.net
buckcash.com
hollistercanada.com
docterror.com
asadart.com
vmayke.org
erwincomputers.com
dirimart.org
okkii.com
loteriasdecehegin.com
mountanalog.com
healingtaobritain.com
ttxmonitor.com
bamthemes.com
nwordpress.com
11bolabonanza.com
avgo.top