SF Hearing Highlights Hopeless Case

Cities around the world are facing crises on a daily basis.?Global warming, immigration, crime, drugs, sanitation, and, these days, mobility.?

There was a time when cities planned the deployment of transportation resources – bridges, tunnels, trolleys, subways, bus lines.?Today, mobility is inflicted upon cities by operators ranging from shared e-scooters to ride hailing, and, most recently, autonomous vehicles.?Cities have been forced into a reactive stance. Quality of life is at stake as are the rich rewards of serving transportation consumers.

Portland and New York have been drawn into ride hailing driver compensation legislation debates. Paris held a plebiscite earlier this year on the future of shared e-scooters and used the negative result to ban e-scooters.?The latest city to face such an existential moment is San Francisco (though the city is uniquely in a struggle with the state over control of its mobility future).?

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is holding a hearing in San Francisco today, Monday, Aug. 7, on “Autonomous Vehicle Interactions with First Responders and Law Enforcement.”?This hearing precedes a CPUC meeting later in the week – Thursday – when filings from Waymo and Cruise will be considered regarding expansion of robotaxi services in California.

The focus of today’s hearing is interactions – widely reported – between emergency responders and robotaxis from Waymo and Cruise in San Francisco.?Robotaxis have blocked responders or otherwise made a nuisance of themselves at the scenes of crimes or emergencies.

The session will consider a range of questions including, but not limited to:

• How many times has a Cruise of Waymo driverless AV come to an unexpected stop in San Francisco?
• What were the reasons for a Cruise or Waymo driverless AV to come to an unexpected stop in San Francisco?
• Describe how remote operators interact with AVs in emergency situations, including actions remote operators are able to use to provide navigation aid to vehicles to move vehicles to locations that do not block traffic.?If remote operators do not take control of the vehicle and perform the dynamic driving task in these situations, please describe why not, including technical and liability issues associated with remote control of AVs.
• How many of the Cruise of Waymo driverless AV unexpected stops have impeded a San Francisco first responder from executing their duties, if any?
• How were these unexpected stopped driverless AV situations resolved and how long did they take to be resolved?
• Describe the testing protocol used by Cruise or Waymo to test that its AVs recognize an emergency situation.

It is painfully clear that Cruise and Waymo, for all of the hundreds of millions of dollars they have spent developing and deploying their robotaxis, they have badly bungled the management of their interactions with emergency service providers in their respective cities.?Even delivery drone operators – not identified as part of these discussions – have been described by San Francisco transportation authorities driving through or otherwise disrupting crime scenes.

This is precisely the kind of nuisance behavior that led the residents of Paris to vote in favor of banning e-scooters.?The difference here is that CPUC is a state-level authority and San Francisco is not in control of its transportation future.

While today’s hearing is an important one – regarding unexpected stopping of robotaxis interfering with emergency responders – it excludes the larger existential question of how and why robotaxis are allowed to operate in the first place.?The questions regarding remote operation are particularly telling and are worthy of entirely separate debate and discussion.

The bigger question regarding the inability of robotaxis to operate in all weather conditions – particularly in a city renowned for precipitation and fog, both capable of disabling robotaxis - is not addressed.?A core guiding principle of CPUC is safety, but the real question is efficacy.?Are robotaxis the correct solution to the problem and what precisely is the problem?

The discussion and presentations at today’s CPUC hearing in San Francisco will no doubt be enlightening.?The questions on the table are important – though the issues on the table ought to have been resolved long ago.?They do highlight the larger question regarding the actual point and purpose of robotaxis.

CPUC session remote access:

Webinar password: 1765767#

Webinar number: 2482 847 4041

Conference Call-in Information: 1-800-857-1917,

passcode 1765767#?

San Francisco is facing huge issues including homelessness, crime, drugs, and the need to bring workers back to offices.?In the midst of these larger issues robotaxis are an undesirable distraction.?In fact, the decline of vehicular traffic in the city has raised the visibility of robotaxis dominating the downtown core – many operating without passengers.

Robotaxis are failing to make their case.?If something doesn’t change they could face a Paris moment or they could be endorsed for their safety at a time when traffic patterns are uncharacteristically light.

Parisians swiftly switched from embracing the novelty of e-scooters to scorning rude e-scooter users and their piles of discarded vehicles. ?A small faction of voters in Paris pushed through a ban.?Robotaxis, too, could face this fate – unless the state comes to the rescue. The resistance in San Francisco has already made its presence known. Can we be given a reason to love robotaxis or will they be inflicted upon us - and what if we resist? Can we resist?