Since the start of the experiment with fully self-driving cars, the company Cruise has already had cases when its test subjects created problems on the roads. One episode made the police nervous when the car did not immediately stop at the request of the law enforcement officers, and once more the taxi blocked the movement of firefighters.
This time, several such cars blocked the road on two streets of San Francisco. They unitedly stood in place and stopped the traffic. There was no reason or explanation for such behavior of self-driving cars.
“We had an issue earlier this week that caused some of our vehicles to cluster together. While this has been resolved and no passengers were injured, we apologize to anyone who was inconvenienced,” a Cruise representative commented.
The incident continued for a couple of hours, until the company’s representatives arrived at the scene and independently rearranged the car.
Cruise is allowed to travel in the city from 10 pm to 6 am, so it was not a big problem. But it did not save it from getting into the social networks Reddit and Twitter, where users were outraged by the blocking and assumed that this is the beginning of a machine uprising.
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency did not comment on how exactly such incidents would be handled or what fine the company could receive. In addition, such cases demonstrate the need to finalize both the legislation and the companies’ own protocols of behavior.
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