Self-driving cars interfere with first responders. The feds are not happy

president The highest road safety agency in the United States warned Autonomous vehicle The developers wrote in a letter on Wednesday about what he called an “unacceptable” pattern. Driverless cars Interfering with the work of law enforcement and other first responders.

“To put it bluntly: an autonomous vehicle that cannot safely interact with first responders poses a danger to the public,” said Jonathan Morrison, Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). books In a letter he described it as a “call to action” for technology developers.

Morrison wrote that NHTSA has documented “A clear pattern of interference Over the past few months, including incidents in which vehicles entered active emergency locations, obstructing ambulances and FirefightersUnresponsive in situations involving flashing lights, fire, and traffic cones.

He directed developers to “immediately focus their resources on resolving this problem,” and said NHTSA would schedule meetings with each company by the end of July to hear solutions. Neither Waymo nor Zoox responded to WIRED’s request for comment.

Officials at several city law enforcement and emergency departments told NHTSA representatives in a closed-door meeting earlier this year that Waymo’s automated car was hindering some emergency responses. WIRED reported in April. One fire chief called the behavior of vehicles in those situations “a safety issue for our crews as well as the victims.”

A San Francisco official told the agency that the company’s technology was “falling behind,” and the city’s fire chief said, “Waymo now often blocks our fire stations from access.” A representative from the Austin Police Department also said Waymos tend to freeze in difficult situations, and the vehicles often fail to respond to officers’ hand signals in emergency situations.

“I think the technology was deployed too quickly and in too massive quantities, with hundreds of vehicles, when it wasn’t really ready,” the Austin police official said, according to an audio recording of the meeting obtained by WIRED.

Austin first responders appeared at a separate City Council meeting this spring to discuss how a Waymo robo-taxi held up an ambulance for two minutes as it tried to respond to a downtown mass shooting that left three people dead and at least 14 injured.

In a letter this week, Morrison said his agency “will continue to exercise our enforcement authority for developers who do not address significant safety concerns.” NHTSA has issued several recalls related to self-driving vehicle technology in the past few years, including two related to Waymo’s conduct. On flooded roads and Close to construction areasAnother is about the Zoox robot taxi stopping in front of oncoming traffic. (Both companies reported that both issues were resolved through software updates.) One school district in Austin also worked with Waymo to train its vehicles to stop for school buses, despite the fix It didn’t work right away.

In a press release On Wednesday, NHTSA also praised the Trump administration’s work to relax regulations that prevent more self-driving vehicles from operating on public roads. Last month, it was a boon for developers of purpose-built robotaxis, including… Tesla And Zoox, the agency Make it easier For companies to deploy vehicles that do not meet vehicle safety standards because they do not have steering wheels, driver-operated brakes, or rearview mirrors.