Robotaxis tangle with San Francisco fire trucks. The boss is fed up

Robotaxis continue to tangle with firefighters on the streets of San Francisco and the fire chief is fed up.

“They're not ready for prime time,” said Chief Jeanine Nicholson.

Nicholson is referring to the driverless taxis from Waymo and Cruise that pick up and drop off passengers in certain areas of the city. Now those companies want to quickly expand service throughout the city, in unlimited quantities, in any type of weather, day or night. And state regulators appear willing to approve their request.

City leaders are concerned, not only in San Francisco, but also in Los Angeles and Santa Monica, where Waymo and another robotaxi company, Motional, say they are ready to roll out their AI-operated robotaxi service as soon as the state regulators show the green light.

The robotaxi industry is being allowed to move too fast and break things, these officials say, putting more robotaxis on public streets even as they prove inept at dealing with fire trucks, ambulances and police cars. And, they say, California state agencies have set the rules so that cities have little say in regulating autonomous vehicles.

“I am not against technology. I understand that it's important and that's how the industry is going,” Nicholson said. “But we have to fix what's broken now, before it is unleashed on the rest of the city.”

State regulators track robotaxi collisions, but they do not track data on traffic flow problems, such as road blockages or interference with fire trucks.

But the Fire Department does. Since Jan. 1, the Fire Department has recorded at least 39 reports of robotaxi incidents.

Although, as the driverless industry points out, robot cars don't get tired, don't drive drunk or high, and aren't distracted by their iPhones, they often stop dead in traffic for no apparent reason. Sometimes these robo-roadblocks are brief, but sometimes the roadway obstructions last long enough to require a robotaxi company employee to travel to the location and remove the car from the road.

Fire Department incidents include reports of robotaxis:

• Running across yellow emergency tape and ignoring warning signs to enter a street littered with storm-damaged power lines, then passing emergency vehicles with some of those cables tangled around lidar sensors on rooftops .
• They twice blocked the fire station entrances, requiring another fire station to send an ambulance to a medical emergency.
• Sitting motionless on a one-way street and forcing a fire truck to back up and take another route toward a burning building.
• He pulled up behind a fire truck that was flashing its emergency lights and parked there, interfering with firefighters unloading ladders.
• Entering an active fire scene and then parking with one of your tires on top of a fire hose.

After a mass shooting on June 9 that injured nine people, a robotaxi blocked a lane in front of emergency services in the city's Mission District. Another lane was open, but in a news release, the Fire Department said that on a narrower street, the blockage could have been “catastrophic.”

To deal with a problematic robotaxi, firefighters try to communicate with a remote robotaxi operator, who can sometimes move the car off the road.

If this proves impossible, the robotaxi company must send a human to the location. In one case, a firefighter had to break a window to convince a robotaxi to move out of the way.

'Facing life and death'

The fire chief said each robotaxi company offers training to help deal with “stuck” vehicles.

“We have 160,000 calls a year. We don’t have time to personally take care of a car that is on the road when we are heading to an emergency,” she said.

Cruise spokeswoman Hannah Lindow said the company is “proud of our publicly reported safety record, which includes driving millions of miles in an extremely complex urban environment. Interacting appropriately with emergency personnel is important to us, which is why we maintain an open line of communication with first responders to receive feedback and discuss specific incidents to improve our response.”

Waymo issued a prepared statement: “Safety is at the center of our mission and we have consistently shared more details than any other [autonomous vehicle] company regarding our methodologies and knowledge about our performance. “We believe this transparency benefits our passengers, who enjoy a safe, accessible and enjoyable mobility option tens of thousands of times per week, and fosters a richer conversation about safety in the industry.”

Nicholson acknowledged that no one has yet been killed or injured due to the robotaxi's misbehavior. “But I don't want something bad to happen because we can't get to a scene. A fire can double in size in a minute. “We're dealing with life and death, and I'm not being dramatic in saying that.”

The robotaxi industry in California is under the jurisdiction of two state agencies: the Department of Motor Vehicles, which issues permits and is responsible for safety, and the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates commercial passenger service, including buses, taxis and limousines.

The public services commission will vote on the robotaxi expansion on June 29. The resolutions it will vote on make clear that, under the agency's own rules, issues such as traffic flow and interference with emergency workers cannot be used to deny expansion permissions. The resolutions list four “goals” to consider: inclusion of people with disabilities; better transportation options for the disadvantaged; greenhouse gas reduction; and passenger safety.

Critics point out that while the commission is concerned about the safety of robotaxi passengers, it leaves other safety issues to the DMV. The DMV collects crash data and has the power to suspend permits, but so far has taken no action or made any statements about robotaxi interference with firefighters.

The DMV declined to make its director, Steve Gordon, available for an interview, but issued a statement suggesting that its four-year-old rules could be open to amendment at some point: “The DMV developed its regulations for autonomous vehicles through a public process. whereby stakeholders (e.g., local, state, federal government agencies, academics, interest groups, industry representatives) provided input into the development. Comments provided during this process were considered and addressed as part of the regulations in the Final Statement of Reasons. The DMV implemented the first set of regulations in 2014, the second in 2018, and the third in 2019. Any future regulations will use a similar process in which members of the public and other interested parties will be invited to participate and provide comments.”

Robotaxi regulation issues go beyond robotaxi expansion: The entire way California regulates autonomous technology is being called into question.

The DMV has come under fire in the state Assembly, which passed a bill in May that would take away some of the agency's power to regulate large driverless trucks. Several lawmakers said they voted yes in part because they believe the DMV has done a poor job regulating self-driving vehicles.

Redacted security data

In 2021, the DMV joined Waymo in a court-approved settlement to allow self-driving car companies to censor not only trade secrets but also basic information about safety performance, including most details of the vehicles. crash reports, as well as information on how the company handles driverless vehicle emergencies. .

The industry is strict with the information it discloses to the public about its operations on public roads.

Waymo won't say how many cars it has in San Francisco. Cruise said he operates between 150 and 300 cars, but he won't be more precise. Neither company will say how big their fleet will grow or how quickly. Neither Waymo nor Motional will say how many robotaxis they are testing in Santa Monica and Los Angeles.

San Francisco city officials, a notoriously fractious group, are united in opposing the expansion plan, from Mayor London Breed on down, until traffic flow, emergency scene problems and improvements are resolved. communications between companies and the city.

“Usually the mayor is on the side of the corporations and the supervisors are on the other side,” said Aaron Peskin, a member of the Board of Supervisors. “We are saying don't give them everything they want until these things are proven. Don't make us guinea pigs.”

The fire chief questions why the ability to deal with emergency situations was not given a high priority.

“If they can do all this with AI, I'm sure they can figure it out,” Nicholson said.

The public service commission has gathered expressions of support from dozens of groups including business organizations, such as the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, and disability advocates, such as the American Council for the Blind. The former argue that the development of robotaxis is essential to keep California at the forefront of innovation; the latter argue that easy and equitable transportation for all people is a social good that will benefit everyone. No one on either side of the debate has disagreed with any of the statements.

But agencies such as the Los Angeles Department of Transportation and the city of Santa Monica have submitted comments to the commission arguing that robotaxi service should be rolled out gradually as problems are identified and addressed. Both also called for much more transparency of data on robotaxi safety issues.

The industry responded with submissions opposing any type of incremental implementation.

What's the rush? Robotaxi companies have spent huge sums of money developing expensive AI technologies and want a return on investment.

Cruise, owned by General Motors, has a lot of money. Waymo, owned by Google's Alphabet, goes even deeper. But the pressure continues. In October, Ford and Volkswagen shuttered Argo, their robotaxi joint venture, after concluding they would get better returns investing that money in electric cars and safety and driver-assist systems.

The public service commission's robotaxi expansion measure was scheduled to be considered as part of a June 29 “consent agenda” package that will bring together 50 orders and resolutions on a wide variety of topics, which will be approved or rejected by a single vote of the agency's five commissioners. . After this story was published, the vote was delayed until July 13.

One of those commissioners, attorney John Reynolds, was appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2021. At the time, he was serving as general counsel to Cruise.