A group of Cruise driverless taxis blocked traffic on multiple streets in San Francisco on Friday, just one day after city officials gave the green light to allow round-the-clock paid service.
Cruise attributes the meltdown to a music festival that interfered with the vehicles' wireless connectivity, making it impossible to re-route them.
"A large festival posed wireless bandwidth constraints causing delayed connectivity to our vehicles," the company tweeted. "We are actively investigating and working on solutions to prevent this from happening again. We apologize to those who were impacted."
The festival, Outside Lands, is one of the largest in California and celebrated its 15th anniversary this year. It's unclear if Cruise made any preparations for the event; PCMag reached out for comment and will update the story if we hear back.
Local news outlets report anywhere from six to 12 vehicles were stranded for 45 minutes or more on multiple inroads to the festival in Golden Gate Park. Cruise vehicles also caused traffic jams in the North Beach neighborhood, NBC Bay Area reports, about 5 miles from the park, raising questions about how Cruise's service operates.
As political strategist Christine Pelosi tweeted, "#OutsideLands is alllll the way across town from North Beach—but Cruise blamed the concert for their faulty cars clogging streets 6 miles away?!"
Alphabet-owned Waymo, the other company approved to operate 24/7, seems to not have suffered the same connectivity issues as GM-backed Cruise. One video shows a stranded Cruise vehicle blocking traffic while a self-driving Waymo vehicle goes around it. "The Waymo is so much smarter," says the video voiceover.
The decision to expand robotaxis in the city was met with contentious arguments for and against, but ultimately passed 3-1. Those who disagreed with it see the Outside Lands incident as validation of their concerns. The fire department was particularly vocal about its opposition, as malfunctioning self-driving vehicles can block first responders on their way to victims, which already happened once prior to the ruling, SFGATE reports.
