Last week, a self-driving car parked in the middle of a busy street Traffic jams during morning rush hour in San Francisco nearly two milesThe car, operated by Waymo, did not leave the intersection until a company technician arrived about 10 minutes later and manually drove it away.
Waymo, the self-driving car company owned by Google parent Alphabet, offers services in San Francisco and Phoenix and is one of two companies operating driverless taxis. The other is Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors, which provides service in San Francisco.
These services are the culmination of more than 10 years of research, development and testing between the two companies. After pouring billions of dollars into the technology, both companies say they will soon roll out driverless services in other cities as well. But because self-driving cars still struggle to drive themselves in some situations, some local officials have questioned whether the services are ready for widespread use.
The day before Waymo cars disrupted traffic, the city of San Francisco dispatched letter to california regulators ask Until officials better understand the technology and its limitations, they will slow the expansion of the service.these letters are NBC News earlier reported.
After several months of limited service in San Francisco, both companies have applied to the California Public Utilities Commission for a permit to charge for 24/7 driverless vehicles across the city. But until the services are better understood, the city said it does not want them to operate in downtown San Francisco or during peak morning or evening commuting hours.
“If the Commission approves sweeping mandates for Waymo and Cruise, the harm and network impact of planned and unplanned AV parking blocking traffic could soon affect a significant portion of all San Francisco travelers,” one of the letters read road Say.
Both Cruise and Waymo said the letters were part of their efforts to expand service in the city. “We have long appreciated the healthy conversations we have with California city officials and government agencies,” said Waymo spokeswoman Katherine Barna.
The city of San Francisco declined to comment on what was said in its letter. “We welcome any suggestions regarding safety,” Cruise spokesman Aaron McLear said.
The letters are the latest in back-and-forth talks between the companies, San Francisco officials and regulators.
Last year, Cruise began offering paid rides in driverless cars between 10 p.m. and 5:30 a.m. in certain areas of San Francisco, and Waymo is now offering unpaid rides without a driver. But both companies still need regulatory approval to launch driver-less commercial services in San Francisco. Waymo began offering paid rides in downtown Phoenix at the end of the year.
In August, Cruise asked the top federal regulator, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, to approve extensive testing of its new self-driving car, called Origin, which does not include a driver’s seat or steering wheel. But San Francisco officials also expressed concern about the plan.
The city said the program could put as many as 5,000 new vehicles on the road over two years, making Cruise’s past problems “even more significant.” If the company doesn’t significantly improve the performance of its technology, it “could quickly exhaust emergency response resources and potentially undermine public confidence in all self-driving technologies.”
Self-driving cars can observe pedestrians, change lanes, and make right turns. But they can struggle to handle more complex or unusual situations, such as unprotected left turns and broken traffic lights that engineers call “edge cases” because they don’t happen as often as other situations.
“Sometimes these cars just need a human to help them out,” said Phil Koopman, an engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University who specializes in autonomous vehicles.
Waymo has been operating a self-driving service in suburban Arizona since late 2020. But this is very different from a crowded city. “If you’re disabled on a quiet suburban street, you’re not in anyone’s way,” said Matt Wansley, a professor at New York’s Cardozo School of Law who specializes in emerging automotive technology. “If you’re in town, that’s important.”
Waymo said the Waymo car that was parked in the middle of a San Francisco intersection last week entered a very complex and busy intersection and was “unable to use its intended route due to a temporary road closure.”
When the car is unable to navigate on its own, remote technicians can send the car additional information to help it get back on the road. If that doesn’t work, the company has to send crews to retrieve the car.
Cruise caused a similar traffic jam in San Francisco in late June. The company was having trouble communicating with many of the cars in its fleet, and when they stalled in one area of the city, they lined up, blocking traffic until technicians arrived and got them moving again.
In September, five broken down Cruise vehicles blocked the path of a city bus, delaying 45 passengers by at least 13 minutes. The company’s vehicles also interfered with the city’s firefighting efforts, according to the letter from San Francisco officials. A car blocked a fire truck on its way to the fire. Firefighters shattered the windows of another vehicle to prevent it from driving over the fire hose.
There were no life-threatening injuries or deaths from the cruise vehicle.
Federal regulator NHTSA recently launched an investigation into the company’s vehicles following such incidents. The agency is concerned that these vehicles “may trap vehicle occupants in unsafe places, such as carriageways or intersections, and act as unintended obstacles to other road users.”
Cruise has repeatedly said it is working to prevent problems. But an independent review of the software systems that manage Cruise’s fleet has shown that they are ill-suited for the kind of broad service Cruise hopes to operate.
The review, completed last summer and recently obtained by The New York Times, examines systems that allow companies to communicate with their vehicles and provide remote assistance when the cars are unable to fix problems on their own.
“Core fleet systems face significant stability, responsiveness and scaling challenges that are now causing fundamental problems for the company,” the review said.
A review by IBM’s consultants said the system was designed to manage small fleets, including safety drivers, and was not suitable for larger fleets where drivers had been removed. “Further expansion of the current platform could exacerbate existing problems,” the review said. “There is a problem with the ability to enhance the current platform while stabilizing it.”
According to the review, the new system will require an additional investment of $10 million to $20 million and may not be completed until the end of this year. That’s a relatively small outlay considering the company spent more than $860 million on the development of its technology in the first half of last year.
Mr. McClear, a Cruise spokesman, said the company has addressed or resolved nearly all of the issues discussed in the review. “This is an outdated report,” he said.
Even as Cruise redesigns and rebuilds its management software, the company sometimes has to send crews to retrieve stuck cars. The same goes for Waymo, company spokeswoman Julia Ilina said. Companies also have to dispatch technicians when cars break down in more traditional ways, such as with a flat tire or a traffic accident.
Because of those constraints — and the hundreds of millions of dollars companies are pouring into research and development — it’s unclear how the service will become a viable business.
“The question is: Does this make economic sense?” said Dr. Koopman of Carnegie Mellon University. “They’re taking drivers out of front of their cars. But if they have as many people in the building waiting for their cars to break down as they do, they’re not really solving anything.”
