"It thinks it’s a road and it ain't because it ain't got a brain and it can't tell that it’s freshly poured concrete."

Concrete Shoes

Self-driving robotaxis have caused all kinds of mayhem across San Francisco, from obstructing the fire department during active blazes to running over a dog.

Now, a driverless Cruise robotaxi has somehow managed to get itself stuck in some wet concrete, SFGate reports  — a hilarious incident that highlights just how much work the company still has left to do before the seemingly dull-witted and slapstick vehicles can safely co-exist with human residents in urban areas.

Freshly Poured

Fortunately, the stuck vehicle had no passengers inside when it became slathered on Golden Gate Avenue.

"I can see five different scenarios where bad things happen and this is one of them," Paul Harvey, a local resident, told SFGate. "It thinks it’s a road and it ain't because it ain't got a brain and it can't tell that it's freshly poured concrete."

Harvey also pointed out the irony of the kind of semantics being used by the likes of Cruise and its competitor Waymo to justify the existence of these driverless robotaxis — that they make fewer mistakes and are safer than humans.

"When a light turns green at a traffic light, I just don’t jump on the accelerator," he told the publication. "I look left and right for some idiot who’s gonna run the light. It does happen."

Bandwidth Constraints

The news comes just days after Cruise self-driving cars suddenly shut down across the city, leading to a major traffic jam. The incident was reportedly caused by "wireless bandwidth constraints," triggered by a nearby festival, according to a Cruise spokesperson.

And unfortunately, there's a good chance that we'll see a lot more Cruise vehicles getting stuck. Last week, California’s Public Utilities Commission voted three to one to allow both Cruise and Waymo vehicles to run their services "at all hours of day or night," becoming the first major US city to do so.

Despite all of the chaos, Waymo told SFGate that its waitlist of interested customers has ballooned to 100,000 people. The company is planning to open the floodgates in the coming weeks.

More on the cars: People in San Francisco Are Already Having Sex in Self-Driving Taxis


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