Citizens in San Francisco appear to be turning again autonomous cars, with two ‘attacks’ reported on self-driving test vehicles so far this year.
Although the city is close to Silicon Valley in location, there is growing resentment among San Francisco natives towards tech companies and gentrification, which now seems to be taking the form of attacks against autonomous cars,
The city of San Francisco requires reporting of all collisions involving self-driving cars, and with so many tech companies in the area, the city is seeing a number of tests – and a growing number of crashes.
In 2018 so far, six crashes have occurred, including one human who ran into an autonomous car, and another where a taxi driver jumped out of his cab and slapped the car.
Both tests involved GM Cruise vehicles from General Motors. No cars were harmed in the incidents.
City authorities have a fractious history with autonomous vehicles. In December 2016, Uber was forced to stop testing after failing to apply for a permit from the city.
Despite the issues, the city has just given the go-ahead for testing of fully self-driving cars on its streets. Until all now, all test vehicles had to have a human driver on board, but from 2nd of April, vehicles can be controlled remotely.
