Just an observation. There's this tricky corner in the Marina Fillmore/NorthPoint. It took the corner pretty fast and I was surprised (could have been under manual control). People cross there indiscriminately without looking and I have been caught in a few close situations in my car. A creeping system around corners blocked by cars could be helpful.
Their cars have trouble with left turns as well. I was walking to Rainbow a few weeks ago and heard a bunch of honking. Turns out the car wouldn't make a left on a green light (Folsom at 13th).
Fast forward a few days and the same thing happened, this time at Mission and 18th. Only at this intersection there's a no left turn restriction and the driver overrode it and made the left.
If one of Cruise's autonomous cars is doing something aggressive I'd assume it's under human control. Hopefully the cars won't pick up too many bad habits.
Left hand turns are one of the tricky things (as experts like John Leonard have also pointed out). The appropriate behavior is VERY context-dependent. Ordinary prudent and conservative behavior in some circumstances is you're-never-going-to-make-a-turn and you'll cause road rage in other drivers under other circumstances.
Talking about creeping: I just saw a self-driving Chevy Bolt hold up traffic turning left from Franklin onto Lombard. It crawled through the turn like a panicked tourist. Granted that this is not a smooth turn, requiring a sharp adjustment at the end. I think this was a GM test or perhaps Lyft. The car was named "Wombat".
