Austin, Texas, is one of the few U.S. cities where autonomous vehicles are making their debut. I know we are on the edge of our seats waiting for the day we can finally eat pizza while our cars drive us to the gym, but it seems the only thing these cars have got going for them is helping to “keep Austin weird.”

Austin’s own journalist-extraordinaire, Robert Downen, took to the Twitter stage on a wild Friday night.

What did he bring us?

Oh, just a couple of cars from Cruise, the ‘look-ma-no-hands’ car company, blocking the heck out of Seventh and Red River Streets downtown.

And no, these weren’t just any cars – they were rockin’ the Cruise paint job, showing off their rebellious spirit.

The first one…

Good evening from Austin where two driverless cars have shut down one of the main intersections. pic.twitter.com/CyDu4fSSuE

— Robert Downen (@RobertDownen_) July 22, 2023

And then the second one…

^An hour after I posted this video, we walked out and there was a new one blocking traffic. pic.twitter.com/Nor6l42xcB

— Robert Downen (@RobertDownen_) July 22, 2023

“Good evening from Austin, where two driverless cars have shut down one of the main intersections,” Downen wrote in his first tweet.

His first video showed one of the cars in the intersection blocking Seventh Street traffic and the second video showed the other car seemingly parked across the farthest right-hand lane of Seventh…also blocking traffic.

Both cars politely turned on their hazard lights.

And then two days later… guess what?

IT HAPPENED AGAIN pic.twitter.com/8uoBiaSXVc

— Robert Downen (@RobertDownen_) July 23, 2023

Cruise is the brainchild of the bigwigs over at General Motors in San Francisco, and they decided Austin was their playground for robot taxis. They came equipped with all the fancy gizmos – sensors, cameras, radar, lidar – you name it, they got it. But it seems like they missed installing the thing that makes the cars Not Block Traffic. They unleashed 300 of their autonomous whips on the streets of San Francisco, Austin, and Phoenix.

On Dec. 12, the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration opened preliminary investigation PE22-014 into Cruise’s activities. The investigation stated that Cruises AVs may have engaged “in inappropriately hard braking or [became] immobilized.”

Whoopsie!

In a written statement sent to TechCrunch, Cruise spokesperson Hannah Lindow stated that “Cruise’s safety record is publicly reported and includes having driven nearly 700,000 fully autonomous miles in an extremely complex urban environment with zero life-threatening injuries or fatalities,” adding that the company was fully cooperating with the NHTSA’s investigation.

Yeah, okay. Cool story.