A historic first as Cruise starts offering truly driverless cab rides in California

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By Matthew Griffin Future Transport 7th July 2022

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

Up until now a safety driver has had to be in self-driving cars in case they needed to take control quickly, but now that driver’s gone.

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The era of commercial autonomous robotaxi service is finally here, just months after the state of California relaxed its rules and let autonomous vehicle manufacturers remove the requirement for a person to be sitting in the drivers seat ready to take control if their self-driving cars go haywire – or get confused and hacked by stickers and sabotaged road markings …

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This week Cruise officially became the first company to offer fared rides to the general public in a major city, and the milestone comes after Cruise received official approval from the California Public Utilities Commission in early June to operate driverless in a commercial capacity.

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Initially, Cruise’s driverless autonomous offering will operate only between 10PM and 6AM, and only on designated streets in the city. But the limits are part of a plan by regulators and the company to prove out the safety and efficacy of its system before deploying it in more locations at additional times. The new operating window already extends its total active time by 1.5 hours as compared to the free driverless test pilot service it was offering between June of last year and the debut of this paid service.

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However, while it might sound like Cruise is still a way away from offering services 24/7 throughout San Francisco it’s still a major step toward a future where self-driving cars dominate the streets in big cities picking up paying fares and put taxi drivers everywhere out of jobs …

See it in action

Matthew Griffin / About Author

Described by NASA as a "Walking Encyclopaedia of the Future" and one of the world’s most in demand keynote speakers Matthew Griffin, Founder and Futurist in Chief of the 311 Institute, a global Futures and Deep Futures advisory firm, is a multi-award winning Futurist and strategic foresight expert, author, lecturer, mentor, podcast and YouTube host.

With a distinguished career running global business units at Atos, EMC, and IBM today Matthew helps leaders and titans of industry from all over the world explore the impact of the inter sections of technology, culture, and leadership, then helps them create high performance organisations that can continuously disrupt, outpace, and outthink their competition.

15 times author of the hit series the Codex of the Future series Matthew's ability to identify, track, and explain the impacts of hundreds of emerging technologies and trends on global business, culture, and society has earned him a powerful reputation and a roster of clients that include royal households, world leaders across the G7, G20, and G77, and many of the world's most recognised and exceptional organisations including ABB, Accenture, ABN Amro, Adidas, AON, ARM, BCG, Centrica, Citi Group, Coca Cola, Deloitte, Dentons, Disney, Dow, EY, Google, KPMG, Lego, Microsoft, Legal & General, LinkedIn, Nokia, Paramount, PepsiCo, PWC, Qualcomm, RWE, Samsung, T-Mobile, UBS, Visa, WIRED, WPP and hundreds of others.

Matthew is regularly featured in the global media including the AP, BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC, Discovery, Forbes, Khaleej Times, Telegraph, TIME, ViacomCBS, WIRED, and the WSJ, and his mission is to help organisations create a fair and sustainable future whose benefits are shared by everyone irrespective of their ability, background, or circumstances.