San Francisco Cops Left Confused After Pulling Over a Driverless GM Cruise

Sophie Webster, Tech Times 10 April 2022, 09:04 pm

On Apr. 10, a video went viral after it was posted online because it showed a driverless GM Cruise car getting pulled over in San Francisco, California, by police who found the car did not have any driver behind the wheel.

Driverless Cruise Car Got Pulled Over by Cops

The video was originally posted on Apr. 1, but it did not go viral until nine days after. It showed a GM Cruise car getting pulled over to the side of the road and stopped as a cop approached the driver's side before accelerating to cross an intersection and pull off further down the road.

A bystander can be heard yelling their disbelief when no driver was seen inside the car even though it was moving.

GM Cruise posted on its corporate Twitter account and said that the Cruise behaved as expected. GM Cruise said that their AV yielded to the police vehicle, then pulled over to the nearest safe location, as intended.

An officer contacted a GM Cruise personnel, and there was no citation issued.

Also Read: Cruise lets you convert your jalopy into Google-type self-driving car for just $10,000

GM Cruise told CNBC that the San Francisco Police Department has a dedicated phone number available at all times for officers and authorities to call when the automaker's driverless vehicles get pulled over.

The San Francisco Police Department did not immediately return requests for more information about the situation.

The episode showed some of the situations that can happen as driverless cars become more common on the streets of San Francisco.

GM Cruise is a GM subsidiary, and it began to offer nighttime rides to the public in early 2022 in San Francisco in driverless cars, even though it is not yet charging and riders need to apply for a waitlist first.

Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet, is planning to offer free driverless rides in its cars in San Francisco to members of a testing program and has completed thousands of rides without a driver in Arizona.

Nuro has a deployment permit to operate driverless cars in San Francisco as well, but the startup is mainly focused on delivery and not taxi service.

GM Gets Approval for Driverless Vehicles

According to Arstechnica, on Feb. 22, GM Cruise was able to successfully get permission from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or NHTSA to put the driverless vehicles into commercial service.

Cruise stated that the vehicle is a zero-emission, shared, electric vehicle that has been designed from the ground up to operate without a human driver. This means that it does not rely on certain human-centered features, like a steering wheel, to operate.

Cruise said that its petition in Feb. demonstrates how the Origin objectives of existing standards safely and helps enable future autonomous vehicle regulations.

The AV cars will be manufactured at GM's Factory Zero in Michigan. According to Reuters, the production is expected to increase in 2022 and will go nationwide in 2023.

The GM Cruise driverless vehicles can be used as robotaxis that can pick up deliveries and people. The vehicle can work on busy streets, highways, and intersections.