Driverless cars covered 5x more test miles in California in 2023
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 2 (Reuters) - (This Feb. 2 story has been corrected to remove the word ‘Chinese’ from paragraph 9)
Completely driverless vehicles traveled nearly 3.3 million miles in California last year, over five times the previous year's total, even as concerns rose in the wake of a Cruise robotaxi accident, state data on vehicle testing released on Friday showed.
General Motors' (GM.N), opens new tab Cruise and Alphabet's (GOOGL.O), opens new tab Waymo accounted for the bulk of the miles - 63% and 36% respectively - recorded without a safety driver, according to the state's department of motor vehicles (DMV).
Taxis with empty driver's seats have become common in the San Francisco area. The Cruise accident, in which an autonomous vehicle hit and dragged a pedestrian 20 feet (6.1 meters), sparked a public outcry and prompted the company to halt operations across the country.
Autonomous tests with a safety driver rose to 5.7 million miles from 5.1 million, DMV data from Dec. 1, 2022 to Nov. 30, 2023 showed.
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