Making a robotaxis stop in a busy intersection: A ride-hail driver recounts how her car was trapped in the hazard of a storm
Lydia Olson, another ride-hail driver, predicts that as the fleets expand, the cars’ limitations—familiar to professional drivers—will become more widely known. She recalls getting stuck behind a self-driving vehicle stranded in the middle of a busy intersection, the last turn-off before a highway onramp, where robotaxis rarely drive. (Waymo is testing its vehicles on freeways in the Bay Area.) “People are going to get a really good look at where the technology is,” she says. I hope they don’t come during rush hour.
Unusual traffic situations are common in dense, changing cities, and can cause self-driving cars to get tripped up. If they want to compete, they will have to change. Firetrucks are blocked by audiovisuals, and city officials have been complaining about that for a long time. A ride-hail driver who goes by Michael because he fears retaliation from ride-hail platforms recalls navigating the city during a spate of gusty storms earlier this year that shattered windows in office towers and brought robotaxis to a standstill. The man remembers driving a vehicle around a fallen tree, and not knowing if it was a car or a truck. On another occasion, a power outage took out a set of traffic lights, and Michael had to steer around a puzzled driverless car stopped in the intersection, hazard lights flashing.
Sometimes breaking the law is the only way to go. Ride-hail driver Glauco Marinho recalls picking up passengers on New Year’s Eve near San Francisco’s City Hall. Drivers had to use a technically forbidden U-turn because of the closed street. Marinho had to make a robotaxi stop in the middle of the road, because the hazard lights on it were not functioning. “It was creating some chaos because there were a lot of drunk people walking back and forth, so there wasn’t a lot of space to maneuver around the stopped car,” he says.
Ilina acknowledged that being a good driver occasionally means being a cop out. The company’s robotaxis might sometimes, she says, cross a double yellow line in order to maintain a safe distance from other road users, including cyclists.
To be a good ride-hiring driver, you have to be an expert at reading people. After Popovics spent four hours trying to scrub projectile vomit off the ceiling of his car, he hired a cleaning service and started paying closer attention to passengers’ intoxication levels. Now, after greeting each passenger, he asks them how they’re doing. He doesn’t say that he wants to know about them. “I want to hear them speak to see if they’re slurring.” He has plastic bags in case someone gets sick.
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The fee for cleaning Cruise is up to $150, and includes vomit. Waymo spokesperson Ilina says (human) workers use cameras inside the company’s vehicles to determine if a cleaning is needed before or after rides, and that robotaxis are always cleaned when they return to home base for charging or maintenance.
Opponents are not likely to take these major changes lying down. There were a number of videos that went viral before the vote that showed people placing orange cones on the hoods of their vehicles. They called it the “Week of Cone,” and it was meant to demonstrate how easy it was to confuse these supposedly high-tech vehicles.
Cruise and Waymo say they are in constant dialogue with police, fire, and emergency services and have created training programs for first responders to “safely interact” with their vehicles. They say that every incident is used to train the rest of the fleet and prevent repeating the same mistakes.
Other drivers doubt most passengers will even notice the difference between the old and new cars. Most people want to stare at their phones, and that’s exactly what we do. “They treat me like I’m a robot anyway.”
Some who know this is coming simply shrug—several ride-hail drivers told WIRED that they think the jobs have become too crappy to fight for, because earnings have declined over the years and there’s no reward for sticking around. “It’s just a gig job,” says Sam Gormus, who doesn’t lose sleep over being replaced by a machine. I could simply stop and look for something else.
The day after California regulators handed driverless car companies a major victory, allowing them to expand their services without restriction in San Francisco, a herd of robotaxis decided to celebrate by breaking down in the middle of a busy street.
According to several local news reports, 10 Cruise vehicles sat paralyzed in a busy intersection near the Outside Lands Music Festival, causing a traffic jam and drawing exasperation from witnesses. The company said the music festival caused wireless issues with its vehicles. In other words, festivalgoers were overwhelming the cellular networks, making it difficult for Cruise’s vehicles to send and receive information.
And it was a sign of more conflict to come, as cities that serve as ground zero for this science experiment face pushback from states that set the rules of the road for driverless cars and seek out conformity in how the technology is regulated.
“Every blocked traffic incident is going to add to degrading public opinion and enthusiasm for the technology, regardless of which company is having the problems,” said Philip Koopman, a Carnegie Mellon University professor who has conducted research on autonomous vehicle safety for decades. It is going to be difficult for companies to deal with a situation if the public opinion is in favor of the opponent.
Other cities will follow. Waymo has its sights set on Los Angeles and New York City, while Cruise is testing its vehicles in Miami and Austin, Texas. The companies are under enormous pressure to turn on the money spigots after their parent companies have invested tens of billions of dollars for more than a decade with very little money flowing back into their coffers.
The robotaxi dilemma is also shining a light on the divided way we regulate cars in the US. The federal government creates vehicle safety rules, leaving the states to license drivers, register vehicles, and enforce the rules of the road. The only things left for cities to do are make infrastructure decisions, help traffic and not much else.
The companies could do themselves a big favor by doing more outreach. Obstructing emergency vehicles is likely to piss off the populace you are trying to serve, and it is unlikely to help you win over the hearts and minds of the residents you are trying to serve. Driverless car companies are required to report crashes and vehicle miles traveled to the state and federal government, but San Francisco officials say they want more data, including incidents in which robotaxis shut down in the middle of the street or block bike lanes. So far, the companies have been silent on this matter.
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More transparency and improved issues are important to the public. It is easier to lose trust with a bad event than it is to regain it after, so this technology will not succeed without trust.
The next phase is likely to be highly litigious. Peskin wants the city to “slow down or walk back” the expanded rollout of robot cars. Requests for another hearing or vote from theCPUC are possibilities. The commission is controlled by the governor and could be sued by the city.
Cities will always be at a disadvantage in these types of fights. California has shown a willingness to let go of concerns about traffic, labor, and safety for the sake of the Big Tech companies. Voters in 2020 approved a measure to allow companies to treat their workers as independent contractors rather than employees.
There was support for people with disabilities or who were distrustful of drivers that didn’t want to be seen burying their heads in the sand when new technology became available. Raj Rajkumar, a robotics professor at Carnegie Mellon University said that disruptions and inconvenient times tend to go hand in hand. Think of the advent of indoor plumbing or the installation of natural gas lines or building roads and highways.
He said that we cannot live without all of them because of their major societal changes. Positives get the headlines and strong passions get the attention. But day-to-day convenience and usability for many customers (assuming that this comes to pass) will begin to triumph.”
