FILE: A cruise technician removes a cone from the hood of a disabled self-driving robotaxi in San Francisco on July 11, 2023. Some residents have protested the expanded use of “coning” cars.
JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images
Thursday’s crash, in which a construction backhoe smashed into the rear bumper of a driverless Cruise car, happened around 9:20 p.m., according to NBC Bay Area. Both vehicles were southbound on Gough Street and the collision occurred as they reached the street’s intersection with Geary Boulevard and Starr King Way in the Western Addition, Sgt. Kathryn Winters of the San Francisco Police Department told SFGATE.
Officers’ initial investigation found the Cruise car attempted to turn left from the center lane of Gough Street onto Geary Boulevard and collided with the vehicle traveling in the left lane of Gough Street, Winters said.
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Cruise ship spokesman Drew Pusateri confirmed the location of the crash with SFGATE, writing, “Our car was struck by another vehicle from the rear,” adding that the driverless vehicle was empty . The company did not respond to SFGATE’s questions about what caused the crash.
The rear left corner of Cruise’s car was partially torn off in the crash, according to video shared by NBC Bay Area — the modified Chevy Bolt’s internal machinery was exposed, and parts of the vehicle’s exterior appeared to sit on sidewalk.
“California regulatory agencies tasked with overseeing the deployment of autonomous vehicles will conduct further investigation,” Winters told SFGATE.
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The victory was hard-fought: City officials and residents blasted the companies over perceived safety issues and the cars’ well-documented struggles to deal with first responders in emergency situations. San Francisco’s transit authorities and fire department spoke out against the expansion for weeks, and city residents criticized driverless vehicles in hours of public comment before the vote.
But the commission ruled in favor of the companies, allowing Cruise and Waymo to run 24-hour fare trips across the city with their self-driving vehicles. Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt he called is a “huge milestone for the audiovisual industry,” and Waymo told SFGATE that the company would begin adding to its 100,000-person waiting list in San Francisco.
It’s been a rough few weeks for Cruise. On Friday at San Francisco’s Outside Lands music festival, a day after the vote, a group of driverless cars pulled up in North Beach; after originally blaming the problem on connectivity issues caused by the festival, Cruise later pinned the traffic problem on a pesky pedestrian. A few days later, SFGATE reported that a cruiser car got stuck in wet concrete in the West Addition. The incident made national news.
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Then, late on the night of August 17, a cruiser with a passenger in the back seat collided at an intersection with a fire truck – siren and lights blaring – en route to an emergency scene , in a discordant version of the San. The oft-reiterated concerns of the Francisco Fire Department about autonomous vehicles. The passenger was injured, but not seriously, police told SFGATE at the time.
As part of the DMV-mandated cutback, the company cannot operate more than 50 vehicles during the day and 150 at night until the department completes an investigation.
Have you heard of anything at Cruise or another tech company? Contact Tech Reporter Stephen Council securely at stephen.council@sfgate.com or Signal at 628-204-5452.
