SF Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival

[Drunk Monk]

Just like the body in the duffle bag, it wasn't OSL...

It was SF.

Cruise: Pedestrian caused North Beach traffic jam, not Outside Lands

• By Greg Wong | Examiner staff writer 
  
• Aug 16, 2023 Updated 15 hrs ago
  

Cruise says the crowds at Outside Lands had nothing to do with the vehicles which stalled and created a traffic backup in North Beach last week. Instead, it was caused by a pedestrian who intentionally interfered with one of their robotaxis.
Craig Lee/The Examiner

Despite widespread reports, the crowds at Outside Lands had nothing to do with the Cruise vehicles that stalled causing a blocks-long traffic backup in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood last week.
Instead, the logjam was created by a pedestrian who intentionally interfered with a robotaxi, Cruise confirmed to The Examiner on Wednesday.
Still, the tens of thousands of Outside Lands concert-goers did worsen cell tower issues for the autonomous vehicle-company.
On Friday night, Cruise, which was servicing Outside Lands for all three days of the festival, needed to remotely assist several of its self-driving cars to help them navigate the massive congestion of people in and around the concert, the company said.
But bandwidth issues on the local cell network, exacerbated by the enormous concentration of people on their phones in Golden Gate Park, slowed down Cruise workers’ ability to access the vehicles. Those remote connection problems prompted Cruise to move and shut down several vehicles near the park.
Cruise maintained that at no point did the company lose connection to the network.
"Last weekend, Cruise successfully transported thousands of concert-goers, amidst widespread reports of traffic congestion, contributing to a very small portion of traffic blockages overall on Friday night,” Cruise spokesperson Hannah Lindow told The Examiner. “We addressed these issues and did not see any recurrence throughout the Saturday or Sunday concert days.”
But things didn't go as smoothly along Grant Avenue in The City’s North Beach neighborhood Friday, when a pedestrian intentionally interfered with a driverless vehicle, causing it to stop.
The decisions San Francisco and California officials make now will have massive ramifications for the future of urban transit
As the car idled waiting for a remote worker to clear it, other Cruise cars picking up and dropping off riders in the area stopped behind the lead car, causing a chain reaction of stalled vehicles and snarling traffic.
Cruise didn’t specify how the person forced the vehicle to stop but said that the company resolved the backup after 15 minutes.
In total, as many as 10 Cruise cars reportedly stalled Friday, a day after the company was granted free reign over servicing San Francisco streets.
The series of stopped cars went viral on social media and elicited a storm of outrage from many people who were already fuming at the California Public Utilities Commission’s decision to permit Cruise and Waymo to expand their fleets citywide without restrictions.
One of the most hotly debated concerns leading into the vote was the numerous reports of stopped cars, some of which impeded emergency vehicles throughout The City.
San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, who, like many at City Hall, has been vocally and fervently against autonomous vehicle expansion in San Francisco, and whose district includes North Beach, roundly criticized the fiasco.
Part of the confusion may have been due to Cruise’s initial response to the incident. The company, responding to a tweet about the stalled vehicles, said, “A large festival posed wireless bandwidth constraints causing delayed connectivity to our vehicles.”
But their comments on Wednesday clarified that the crowds at Outside Lands and the stalled cars at North Beach weren’t related after all.