DRIVERLESS CARS


According to a graphic shared by San Francisco city leaders at the hearing, there were almost 600 incidents of unexpected stops reported in the city since the launch of driverless operations. It’s likely a fraction of actual incidents. San Francisco Fire Chief, Jeanine Nicholson, said critical data from Waymo and Cruise is missing. “We just don’t have the data. It has not been disclosed by


AV


companies. Everything has been redacted,” said Chief Nicholson. She shared her earnest opinion in her testimony to the CPUC: “I understand and appreciate the safety that autonomous vehicles can bring to the table in terms of no drunk drivers, no speeding, all of that kind of stuff. “However, they are not ready for prime time because of how they have impacted our operations,” said Nicholson. The fire chief said San Francisco Fire


Department responds to


160,000 calls a year - 80 per cent of them are medically-related. According to the fire department, this year, there have been 55 reported incidents of interference. “This includes not just unexpected stops in front of our fire stations, but not allowing our vehicles to respond to our incidents,” said Nicolson. Phil Koopman specialises in self- driving car safety at Carnegie Mellon University and has been in that field for more than two decades. He says the fire chief has a point. “The big problem here is that these cars are not very good at dealing with the unexpected. That’s a fundamental limitation to


the


technology. Twenty-five years ago a Carnegie Mellon car with 98 per cent hands-off the steering wheel,


PHTM SEPTEMBER 2023


crossed the country and for 25 years we’ve been working on that last two per cent. So these companies say it will be fixed right away but we keep hearing that year after year,” said Koopman. Concerned cab drivers listened carefully at the hearing, worried about their jobs. But they and others question the safety and the track record


of autonomous


vehicles. “To give these vehicles full access to the streets 24/7, all over the city, for commercial passenger service, at a time when they’ve proven to be not up to the task, would be a grave, grave mistake,” said Mark Gruberg, member of the San Francisco Taxi Workers’ Alliance. Concerns were also raised at the hearing by


transportation and


safety agencies about erratic driving. They lobbied forcefully for a far more measured rollout of the experimental autonomous vehicles but to no avail. So, following approval by the CPUC, Cruise and Waymo will now be able to operate in direct competition with Uber and Lyft in offering rides summoned by an app in San Francisco. Waymo will be permitted to drive at speeds of up to 65 miles per hour and in inclement weather, while Cruise will be limited to 35 miles per hour and will not be allowed to


drive when weather does not permit. Meanwhile, within days of the CPUC’s approva, l videos of robotaxi malfunctions began appearing on social media, with opponents saying they are seeing their fears realised. On Friday, amid increased traffic from a music festival, a number of self-driving cars seemed to glitch. One TikTok user recorded a Cruise vehicle causing “mayhem” outside the festival where it was stuck at an angle in the middle of the street. “They’re causing mad confusion over here,” the user said. A Twitter user shared a video of a Cruise vehicle nearly running over a family on a crosswalk over the weekend. In San Francisco’s North Beach neighbourhood, as many as ten Cruise cars blocked a main thoroughfare, stoking anger from locals. Aaron Peskin, who represents the neighbourhood on the San Francisco board of supervisors said he received a number of complaints from his constituents that night. He said on Twitter that the chaos underscored the concerns he and others raised ahead of the CPUC vote. “Why do state commissioners think it’s OK to put people in danger and create


traffic chaos on our


neighbourhoods streets?” he wrote. “We warned them and they refused to listen.” In a tweet, Cruise said that the music festival caused issues with the cellphone networks


the


vehicles rely on for connectivity, and that it is “actively investigating and working on solutions to prevent this from happening again”. Critics pointed out that the ten-car traffic jam occurred several miles from the concert.


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