What’s the Matter With the Resistance Against Autonomous Vehicles in San Francisco?
Crazy incidents around autonomous cars have been around for a while, like people throwing themselves in front of them and thinking that the laws of physics don’t apply to them. Or encounters or even climbs of a different kind.
But now activists have certainly taken the cake, temporarily blocking empty autonomous cars with the help of construction cones they place on the vehicles’ hoods. Employees of the robot taxi companies always have to come to remove them first, as the vehicles stop for safety reasons and do not move on. The activist group doing this calls itself the Safe Street Rebels and their action is to remove autonomous vehicles from the streets, which they see as a problem in every way. Jobs being taken away, traffic they block and exacerbate, as well as concerns about the safety of the vehicles.
So let me understand this: the best way to not have autonomous cars blocking traffic is to put construction cones on their hoods to have them stall – and block traffic. Very smart logic.
The trigger for this is the meeting of the California Public Utility Commission (PUC), now scheduled for August 7 after two postponements, at which a vote is to be taken on the unrestricted approval of Waymo and Cruise’s autonomous vehicles. The agency itself has already signaled in advance that this approval will be approved.
Until now, the two robotaxi providers have only been allowed to operate driverless cars in certain areas, during certain times and weather conditions, with a limited number of vehicles, and only in some cases for a fee. For example, Cruise with passengers (like me, for example) is currently only allowed to operate between 9 p.m. and 5:30 a.m. in the entire San Francisco metropolitan area, and that includes during heavier rain.
But the PUC, after several years of testing with the vehicles, now feels the technology is ready. But San Francisco politicians, transportation officials and city officials have not been at all happy with it and have released statistics about incidents involving the robotaxis, urging the PUC to slow down.
In fact, reports of incidents involving the vehicles have been on the rise in recent months, and that certainly has to do with the increased number of driverless robotaxis in the two fleets, which now stand at nearly 600. Robotaxis stalled on roads and blocking traffic, emergency vehicles unable to get anywhere because of the vehicles, and several hundred collisions involving the robotaxis.
However, it is the latter that are themselves mostly the victims of the collisions. If one goes through the collision reports of the California DMV, which are mandatory to file, then in well over 90 percent of the cases the robotaxis have been hit by other cars driven by humans. The most common type of collision here is when the robotaxis are hit standing-from-behind by other cars traveling at low speeds.
The behavior of human drivers around autonomous cars, which appears to be different from their behavior toward other road users, has resulted in robotaxis being eight times more likely to be involved in collisions. Are we seeing bullying of robotaxis by impatient human drivers here?
In any case, city officials presented these statistics as the basis for their opposition to the PUC – but as it turns out, not entirely honestly. That’s because both Waymo and Cruise found incorrect numbers in the city’s statistics. It’s no surprise that the two companies are pushing back against it in editorials like this one, making counter-arguments. And as if by chance to support the discussion, this video of a stolen vehicle rollover in San Francisco was published:
But the fears of city officials and activists seem to extend little to crash statistics involving human drivers. In 2022, for example, there were 39 traffic fatalities in the city, which was a sad peak of a quarter increase over the previous year. However, the Safety Street rebels didn’t put construction site cones on the hoods of these drivers, because that’s apparently normal.
This article was also posted in German.
