(NewsNation) — As autonomous vehicles become increasingly popular in San Francisco, some riders are using the vehicles for an unintended purpose.
Cruise and Waymo, two companies that have been part of the city’s driverless taxi pilot program, have been operating since early 2022. Last week, the city voted to expand their services to offer fully driverless rides 24/7 and increase the number of cars that are on the road.
The San Francisco Standard spoke to four Cruise car riders who said they’ve recently had sex in the driverless vehicles in the city.
“It seems like I’m a trailblazer,” one passenger told the Standard. “It’s also fun to realize that this is like the first place you can do this in the country.”
Rules and regulations surrounding robo-taxis remain vague, considering it’s a new industry. However, Cruise has pretty extensive camera surveillance inside and outside of their cars.
“We record video inside of the car for added safety and support,” Cruise states on its website. “If something happened during your ride, we might review the recording to better understand what happened. We only record audio during active support calls.”
A Waymo spokesperson told The Standard that its team might review recordings if there are concerns about cleanliness, safety, crashes or missing items.
The vote to expand driverless cars on the road in San Francisco came after hours of heated debate. Critics voiced their concerns over claims the technology didn’t recognize things like hand signals from bicyclists, emergency vehicles and some emergency situations. They gave reasons as to why the program needed more time to be perfected and shouldn’t expand.