By Danielle McVay, HANC Board
A quick internet search of “driverless cars San Francisco” will quickly solicit articles with fiery commentary and headlines such as “Fire chief warns against ‘unleashing’ self-driving taxis in San Francisco” (The Guardian), “San Francisco may soon get 24/7 driverless cabs. City leaders are fuming.” (The Washington Post) and a particularly funny video on the ABC 7 news site “Journalist documents wild ride inside Waymo self-driving car in SF'' which shows a very frustrated journalist give up on her Waymo ride and return to her private vehicle to make the trip to pick up her son at a popular destination in The City.
Most concerning is a letter from San Francisco Fire Fighters Local 798 sent on June 26th to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) ahead of a vote initially scheduled for June 29th but currently postponed till July 13th to expand driverless cars offerings. The letter states “autonomous vehicles have a demonstrated track record of interrupting response to emergency incidents and making dangerous situations even worse….blocked our emergency response to a mass shooting in San Francisco's Mission District”.
What Cruise, an entity of General Motors, hopes to gain is an expansion of their service as a fare collecting transit option. The goal? To operate at all hours of the day. Currently, Cruise is allowed to collect fares in a completely driverless vehicle (no safety driver present) between the hours of 10pm and 6am only. (See Draft Resolution TL-19145). These roadblocks to roll out (pun intended) are possibly just the tip of the iceberg. The California DMV webpage for autonomous vehicles lists only 4 permit holders who are currently in “deployment”, which includes Cruise and Waymo. This is a significantly smaller number than the 41 “Autonomous Vehicle Testing Permits (with a driver)” holders. We can only imagine how the challenges we are seeing now will increase with more and more of these driverless cars on the road.
More to come following July 13th. Unless the decision is further delayed.