San Francisco mayor calls for tougher rules after Waymo traffic fiasco

It turns out that even San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, who once declared that the city should be a city Testing for emerging technologyIt has its limits. Especially when this emerging technology creates a massive traffic jam that lasts for hours and leaves thousands in a standstill.

Mayor Lowry asked state regulators to strengthen rules for self-driving vehicles nearly two weeks after a Waymo robot car stopped moving in heavy traffic on July 4, ran out of power, and shut down major streets, worsening gridlock. Traffic congestion, which besieged municipal buses, became a city-wide problem affecting thousands of people.

In his letter to the state Department of Transportation, seen by TechCrunch, Lowry pointed to two events — widespread power outages in December and a July 4 Golden Gate Bridge fireworks display that attracted 100,000 spectators — both of which left dozens of Waymo vehicles stranded and traffic paralyzed. San Francisco Chronicle First mentioned on the message.

He said in the letter that the events “demonstrated that California’s current regulatory framework does not adequately address how autonomous vehicles operate during major accidents, whether planned or not. The challenge California now faces is not only whether autonomous vehicles are able to operate safely under normal conditions, but also whether they are able to perform reliably during extraordinary accidents.”

Lurie said self-driving car manufacturers must be able to demonstrate four “core operational capabilities” and asked the California Department of Transportation to set statewide standards to prevent future problems like the July 4 traffic jam.

Under Lurie’s vision, companies would be required to immediately remove or move robotaxis from active travel corridors to keep people moving, and they would also be required to be able to adapt in real time, adjusting their routes, service area, and pick-up and drop-off locations. The companies will also have to share real-time operations data with local agencies, including service outages, locations of immobilized robo-taxis, and recovery efforts, as well as demonstrate through testing their ability to handle large flows of people and traffic.

TechCrunch has reached out to Waymo for comment. The article will be updated once the company responds.

Any company wishing to operate a robo-taxi service in California must successfully pass two testing and deployment permitting processes, one of which is administered by the state. Department of Motor Vehicles The other is by the Public Utilities Commission. The current regulatory framework in California is more stringent than in other states such as Texas and Arizona, but this has not discouraged companies from trying to operate there.

San Francisco and the broader region extending south to Silicon Valley have long been a testbed for self-driving vehicle technology. Six companies, including Nuro, Waymo and Zoox, have driverless test permits, which allow vehicles to be driven without a human safety operator behind the wheel.

But the area has also become a staging ground for commercial services, which requires other permits from the DMV and CPUC.

Waymo is the largest, with an estimated 1,000 robotaxis operating in the Bay Area today. But there are plenty of other companies that are testing or preparing to launch commercial operations, including Amazon-owned Zoox as well Outstanding robotaxi service Which will be operated by Uber. Tesla has a branded robotaxi service but does not use self-driving vehicles, nor does it have the necessary permits to do so. Instead, Tesla has a for-hire transportation permit, which allows its drivers to pick up and drop off passengers around San Francisco in vehicles equipped with advanced driver assistance systems rather than fully autonomous software.

Waymo’s size has made it the focal point for organizers in San Francisco and beyond. The company now operates in 11 cities, and said it completes more than 500,000 paid trips each week. In San Francisco, Lowry noted that Waymo agreed to limit its service on July 4 near the waterfront, and also appointed a representative to the city’s emergency center. But that wasn’t enough to keep Waymos out of the heavy traffic that occurred outside that area.

These voluntary measures are no longer enough, Lowry said, which reflects how large Waymo’s fleet is. He said the four proposed requirements “will not undermine autonomous vehicles, but rather enhance them.”