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Feb 20, 2024

PD Editorial: Tap the brakes on driverless cars

Editorials represent the views of The Press Democrat editorial board and The Press Democrat as an institution. The editorial board and the newsroom operate separately and independently of one another.

Editorials represent the views of The Press Democrat editorial board and The Press Democrat as an institution. The editorial board and the newsroom operate separately and independently of one another.

Anyone who’s visited San Francisco this year might have seen a taxi without a driver zipping along the city’s streets. Self-driving cars are here, and California should approach them with much more caution than it has so far.

State regulators originally allowed autonomous vehicles onto the streets of San Francisco last fall as an experiment. They were permitted to pick up passengers during limited hours and in limited areas. It was both proof of concept and an opportunity for the innovators in the space to gather real world data and to train their artificial intelligence models.

The two main companies are Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors, and Waymo, owned by Google parent company Alphabet. Between them, they have a few hundred cars on the streets of San Francisco.

Their technology failed many times in this first year. One autonomous car parked in front of a fire station driveway. Another went through police tape at an active crime scene. Some simply stopped on the road and blocked traffic. Officials documented dozens of incidents per month.

Despite those problems and local opposition, the California Public Utilities Commission recently authorized expanding the experiment in San Francisco. More vehicles at all hours in more areas.

A week after that decision, one of those taxis crashed into a firetruck, and state officials asked the company to scale back its fleet for a while.

Now there’s talk about expanding to other communities. Los Angeles will almost certainly be first, but it might not be long before driverless taxis cruise around Wine Country. That could actually be a boon, providing a safe way for tourists to visit the wineries they want on the schedule they want without getting behind the wheel of a rental car after a few tastings too many. But only if the technology improves substantially.

That will take time. Rather than expanding, the state and the companies should dial things back. Two things stand in the way of that happening.

First, regulation is bifurcated between two state departments. Both the Public Utilities Commission and the Department of Motor Vehicles have a say in whether autonomous cars are allowed on the streets. Neither, however, conducts a comprehensive safety and traffic review. Each has niche authority. The companies meet their limited requirements, and the big picture is lost.

Second, cities cannot enforce local rules for autonomous vehicles. What works for San Francisco might not be so appealing in Santa Rosa or Napa. While no one wants a patchwork of rules that make deploying a new technology impossible, some local oversight should exist. Californians cannot trust that state regulators looking at San Francisco and Los Angeles will have much understanding or interest in meeting the needs of smaller communities.

Local resistance already is manifesting in San Francisco where city leaders want more control and residents are waging guerrilla action against self-driving taxis. They place traffic cones on the hoods of the cars, which causes them to freeze in place.

It’s past time for the Legislature to improve state oversight and grant some local control. With the current legislative session winding down, that’s unlikely to occur this year, but lawmakers should prioritize updating state laws and rules to address the emerging technology of driverless cars. In the meantime, state regulators and the companies themselves should tap the brakes on expanding where and when these cars may be on the road.

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Editorials represent the views of The Press Democrat editorial board and The Press Democrat as an institution. The editorial board and the newsroom operate separately and independently of one another.