We believe this transparency benefits our riders - who are enjoying a safe, accessible, and delightful mobility option tens of thousands of times per week - and encourages a richer conversation about safety in the industry.” Waymo issued a prepared statement: “Safety is at the heart of our mission and we have consistently shared more detail than any other company regarding our methodologies and insights into our performance. While regulators investigate a spate of Teslas steering themselves into parked vehicles, Tesla owners have been reporting faulty collision-avoidance systems. Interacting properly with emergency personnel is important to us, which is why we maintain an open line of communication with first responders to receive feedback and discuss specific incidents to improve our response.”īusiness A Tesla mystery: Why didn’t auto-braking stop these crashes? Hannah Lindow, spokesperson for Cruise, said the company is “proud of our publicly reported safety record which includes driving millions of miles in an extremely complex urban environment. We don’t have the time to personally take care of a car that’s in the way when we’re on the way to an emergency,” she said. The fire chief said each robotaxi company offers training to help deal with “bricked” vehicles. In one case, a firefighter had to smash through a window to coax a robotaxi to move out of the way. If that proves impossible, the robotaxi company must dispatch a human to the scene. To deal with a troublesome robotaxi, firefighters attempt to communicate with a remote robotaxi operator, who sometimes can move the car out of the way. Another lane was open, but in a news release, the Fire Department said on a narrower street, the blockage could have been “catastrophic.” Entering an active fire scene, then parking with one of its tires on top of a fire hose.Īfter a mass shooting June 9 that wounded nine people, a robotaxi blocked a lane in front of emergency responders in the city’s Mission District.Pulling up behind a firetruck that was flashing its emergency lights and parking there, interfering with firefighters unloading ladders.Sitting motionless on a one-way street and forcing a firetruck to back up and take another route to a blazing building.Twice blocking firehouse driveways, requiring another firehouse to dispatch an ambulance to a medical emergency.Running through yellow emergency tape and ignoring warning signs to enter a street strewn with storm-damaged electrical wires, then driving past emergency vehicles with some of those wires snarled around rooftop lidar sensors.The Fire Department incidents include reports of robotaxis: Sometimes these robo-roadblocks are brief, but sometimes the road obstructions last long enough to require a robotaxi company employee to travel to the scene and move the car out of the way. 1, the Fire Department has logged at least 39 robotaxi incident reports.Īlthough, as the driverless industry notes, robot cars don’t get tired, don’t drive drunk or high, and aren’t distracted by their iPhones, they do often stop dead in traffic for no apparent reason. State regulators track robotaxi collisions, but they don’t track data on traffic flow issues, such as street blockages or interference with firetrucks.īut the Fire Department does. San Francisco officials want to delay a vote on robotaxi expansion while issues with emergency vehicles are sorted out.

Business San Francisco police back the fire chief’s complaint about robotaxis interfering with first responders

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