On Sunday 22 January at 1.45 in the morning, the San Francisco firefighters were called to put out a big fire that had broken out in a rather central building. They were busy putting out the flames when a self-driving car crashed onto the scene. A robot taxi. Regardless of the danger, which he clearly hadn’t noticed, the car proceeded towards the fire and was now near a fire extinguisher when an agent to avoid the worst broke the window, entered the passenger compartment and managed to stop the car.
A ride in San Francisco on a driverless taxi: how incredible is that steering wheel that moves by itself
It is one of nearly 100 robotaxis accidents recorded in San Francisco in the last six months. Nothing very serious but, let’s say, irrational behaviors that blocked city traffic sometimes for a few hours. What is happening in San Francisco is interesting because robotaxis are by now close to entering our cities and the most important test is taking place in San Francisco: for a few months now, the cars of Google (Waymo) and General Motors (Cruise) have been authorized to operate a taxi service at night, from 10 in the evening to 6 in the morning.
The results for now are controversial: on the one hand there are the accidents, it is true, but on the other there is the fact that nothing serious has ever happened. However, the San Francisco Transportation Authority has just written a couple of letters expressing some concern about the expansion of a service that is still evidently running in. Let’s move forward, that’s the sense, but without haste. Also because, according to promises, the arrival on the market of Elon Musk’s Tesla robotaxis “without pedals or steering wheel” is imminent. The entrepreneur had already announced that we would have one million robotaxis on our streets in 2020. Totally wrong forecast The impression is that this time too we will have to wait.