A street was blocked for road work in my San Francisco neighborhood this month, with a worker holding a large STOP sign to direct traffic.
The public works employee holding the sign was flummoxed as how to get the car to move away. After several minutes, the car slowly backed its way out and crossed the street, but ended up on the wrong side. After another 10 minutes, it managed to pull itself together, get in the right lane and drive down the hill.
“They have run over our hoses, they have blocked our fire engines from going on calls, they have just blocked our vehicles from getting down streets where there is a possible fire. They have just done a multitude of things. We had to break the window of one once because we could not get its attention,” Nicholson said.
Resistance is building locally and nationally. Cathy Chase, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, a nonprofit in Washington seeking more regulation and data transparency on autonomous vehicles as part of its mission for more highway and road safety, said it was “illogical and irresponsible at best, and dangerous and deadly at worst, to go forward with any expansion until the significant problems have been resolved.
Waymo said it has been working with public safety officials and provides them a phone number to reach Waymo directly in the event that one of its cars stop. Cruise said it is proud of its safety record “which is publicly reported and includes millions of miles driven in an extremely complex urban environment.” Both companies have over 30 letters of support for their plans, from a range of groups including many representing the disabled, such as the National Federation of the Blind of California.
The SFMTA provided comparison data in its letters of protest. According to the SFMTA, based on data filed with the NHTSA, Cruise’s injury crash rate is estimated to have been 506 injury crashes per 100 million vehicle miles traveled between June and November, 2022—approximately 6.3 times the 2021 national average, which is 80 injury crashes per 100 million VMT. Waymo’s injury crash rate is estimated to be 104 injuries per 100 million VMT, approximately 1.