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Jul 21, 2023

‘Incompetent’ driverless cars are wreaking havoc on San Francisco

They ram through loose electrical wires and bring rush hour traffic grinding to

They ram through loose electrical wires and bring rush hour traffic grinding to a halt. They tear through crime scene caution tape and rear end city buses. Sometimes, they even obstruct Muni routes like the N Judah, inconveniencing hundreds of passengers who are simply trying to go home after a long day at work.

Driverless cars — which are suddenly quite common in the Bay Area — have been touted as life-saving solutions by Cruise and Waymo, two local tech behemoths that are in an arms race for San Francisco's roadways. But the "rigorous" training that these cars must undergo each day is still annoying — and endangering — San Franciscans who didn't sign up to become the multibillion dollar companies’ unpaid lab rats.

In June 2022, the California Public Utilities Commission authorized Cruise to deploy 30 autonomous vehicles — or AVs — for passenger use throughout designated regions of San Francisco, and said the company could charge for those rides. Five months later, the CPUC authorized Waymo to put its AVs on Bay Area streets as part of the state's driverless pilot program. Optimistically described as a "milestone" by CPUC, the agreement gave Waymo the green light to autonomously drive passengers throughout San Francisco and stretches of Daly City, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Mountain View, Palo Alto and Sunnyvale for free test rides.

A Waymo autonomous vehicle drives along California Street on April 11, 2022 in San Francisco, California.

On Dec. 12, 2022, Waymo applied for the CPUC permit that would allow the company to charge for driverless rides, filings show; four days later, Cruise applied to expand its fleet and deploy 100 self-driving cars across "the entire 7x7" of San Francisco. Both requests are still pending, and the next hearing is scheduled for June 29, TechCrunch reported.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is still skeptical about Cruise and Waymo's technological capabilities. The companies continue to wrestle for dominance, outpacing lesser known contenders like Pony.ai, Zoox and AutoX, but the city is wary of both Waymo and Cruise because they’ve obscured data about their cars’ basic operations.

There's also the maelstrom of photos, videos and news reports showing the vehicles can cause major traffic snafus. Yet the expansions of Waymo and Cruise have marched on, with the CPUC seemingly poised to grant the permits the companies seek. Meanwhile, local transportation agencies have protested, arguing that the cars still endanger pedestrians, drivers and emergency personnel.

Just a few weeks ago, Anthony Russell witnessed a "whole spectacle" near 19th Street and Mission involving a stalled Waymo and a group of ranchers trying to unload a forklift. After Russell explained to the confused ranchers that they needed to get the driverless car behind them to back up, "they started whooping and waving at it as if they were wrangling some cattle," he said.

Last month, Michaela Foley, who lives near the city's famous Painted Ladies, said she saw a group of exasperated construction workers try to usher a Cruise vehicle through a clogged intersection. "It was so goofy," she told SFGATE, describing the cars as "incompetent ‘Futurama’-type robots."

A Waymo driverless taxi stops on a street in San Francisco for several minutes because the back door was not completely shut, while traffic backs up behind it, on Feb. 15, 2023.

According to Waymo, its AVs successfully maneuver around construction zones, emergency vehicles and double-parked cars on a regular basis. If the cars don't quite know what to do, the company wrote, they’ll stop out of an abundance of caution.

But that means "they will stop traffic" and "stop moving if there is any sort of obstruction on the road," former San Francisco resident Rachelle Green told SFGATE. Back in December, she said, she and other drivers were trapped by a Waymo SUV that couldn't comprehend how to move past a double-parked produce truck.

"It's a little frustrating and just creepy to, you know, just see these cars with nobody in them," said Debi Durst, a longtime Sunset District resident. Just two months ago, she saw one of them jerk to a halt near Herbert Hoover Middle School right as students were pouring out of class.

"It was quite the traffic jam, because the car was just stuck dead in the middle of this intersection right in front of the school," Durst said. Shortly after, a man with a vest and some sort of tablet — presumably a company employee — showed up and desperately tried to untangle the mess. "He was just running around the car pressing all of these things on the tablet to get it to work, I guess, and nothing was happening," she laughed.

Two Waymo driverless taxis stop and face each other on a street in San Francisco before driving past each other, on Feb. 15, 2023.

Even though Durst helped beta test the technology for driverless cars and initially felt optimistic about them, now she says that seeing them all over the road is just "weird."

That's one way to describe pilotless vehicles that are seemingly unable to consistently follow basic traffic laws or navigate San Francisco's chaotic roadways. Even though Cruise brags that its cars have "state-of-the-art computer vision" that allows them to operate even "in the darkest of nights," they’ve been stumped by simple intersections. Company reports show that the vast majority of their collisions took place after sundown.

Vincent Osorio, a project manager at Banana Republic, told SFGATE that he's gotten stuck behind driverless AVs at least three times at night near Fell Street and Kezar Drive. "It couldn't comprehend that turn into Fell," he said.

The city's transportation agency isn't sold on AVs, either.

In a 2021 letter endorsed by the SFMTA, representatives pointed out how a seemingly innocuous marketing reel from Cruise — which was supposed to illustrate the user benefits of driverless cars — backfired by showcasing how their vehicle, "Sourdough," picked up and dropped off chief technology officer and co-founder Kyle Vogt by double-parking rather than pulling over to the curb.

"Rather than demonstrating driving superior to human driving, the Cruise Videos elevate passenger convenience over the safety and convenience of all road users," the letter reads. Another stylish marketing video released that year shows the car making the same decision multiple times.

Waymo Taxi drives in "Bus Lane" in San Francisco Calif.

Waymo Taxi drives really close to SF Muni bus in San Francisco Calif.

Similarly, "Waymo driverless AVs have committed numerous violations that would preclude any teenager from getting a California Driver's License," a May 31 comment from the SFMTA reads.

Despite the companies’ repeated claims that driverless cars make roads safer, in the past 12 months, emergency personnel have received a surge of 911 calls from people who watched these "erratic" vehicles block lanes or completely stop in the middle of the road, SFMTA said in a January letter to the CPUC.

According to the SFMTA, often, the cars would signal one way then abruptly go the other, or stall out and force other drivers to move around them by veering onto the sidewalk. Waymo traffic incidents skyrocketed to about 30 per month in March and April, according to the SFMTA comment from May.

Map depicting autonomous taxi incidents in San Francisco Calif.

"In the short term, we need AVs to demonstrate that they can operate on our streets without creating new hazards," Stephen Chun, a spokesperson for the SFMTA, told SFGATE in a written statement. "If they want us to believe things are getting better, they should give us data to demonstrate that, because that is not what we are seeing from calls to 911 and reports from SF Fire Department and Muni personnel."

The SFMTA wrote in its January letter that there were 92 reported incidents involving Cruise vehicles from May 29, 2022, through Dec. 31, 2022. Frustratingly, 88% of them took place on busy corridors where Muni lines, buses and street cars carry thousands of passengers each day. Even if an AV stalls for just a few minutes in one of those areas, Chun explained, it can disrupt service up to 2.5 hours. He also said that the SFMTA received three times as many calls and complaints in March and April compared to December of last year.

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Additionally, there have been multiple instances where Cruise and Waymo AVs have encroached on local firefighters.

In a slew of incident reports first published by Mission Local, San Francisco Fire Department personnel describe how they’ve resorted to "poking," "prodding" and "pounding" on AVs that drove right into the middle of potential "life and death" situations.

Last April, a Cruise car stopped right next to a Recology truck, blocking firefighters who were rushing down 17th Street to put out a blaze. "Engine 12 was dead in the water until the Recology driver came running and moved the garbage truck," the fire department wrote.

Then, in January, SFFD described how one AV accelerated toward a fire on Hayes Street and nearly ran over firefighters’ hoses, a stunt which could have seriously injured them. In the redacted report, the firefighter said they "yelled at" the car to halt and banged their fist on the hood. After "warning" it twice, they finally "smashed the window and the vehicle stopped."

A Waymo vehicle stops in front of fire truck in San Francisco, Calif.

After the bomb cyclone that tore through the Bay Area in March, one eerie report details how a Waymo vehicle driving north on Missouri Street sped toward firefighting personnel clearing a downed tree. When a firefighter flashed a box light into the driver's seat to make it slow down, it became clear there was no one at the wheel. Then, another car — also driverless — raced toward them before abruptly grinding to a halt. Both stopped just a few feet away from the fire engine. The firefighter wrote that had they been clearing the branches in the dark, they were skeptical the cars would have spared the first responders on scene.

In response to an SFGATE request for comment about safety procedures, a Cruise spokesperson wrote, "We are proud of our publicly reported safety record which includes driving millions of miles in an extremely complex urban environment. 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."

Cruise released a list of resources specifically for emergency personnel in February. A Cruise spokesperson said that out of the 2 million miles its AVs have driven, none have caused serious injuries or fatalities. Waymo asserted the same, and said that the public's lack of trust in the technology is due to their own unfamiliarity with the company and its safety track record.

Riding in an autonomous vehicle feels a lot like being at the mercy of a 16-year-old student driver, but without the reassurance of an adult in the passenger seat.

This comparison is what I furiously scribbled down in my notes during a recent test drive in a Waymo vehicle. The route was fairly simple: I was picked up near 24th Street BART and delivered to the notorious Safeway in the Castro. As my invisible pilot drove through the Mission's cluttered roadways, it did exactly what it was supposed to do. It gingerly swerved through messy intersections. It yielded to the mail carrier who frantically jaywalked across Folsom. It ordered me to keep my hands off the wheel, assuring me that "the Waymo Driver is in control at all times." But then the car did something I didn't expect: It slowly started to veer toward oncoming traffic.

Waymo Taxi blocks traffic in San Francisco Calif.

Unsure if it would correct itself, I did what anyone in this situation would probably do: I yelled out loud, like an idiot, to no one in particular. Seconds later, the car readjusted, and we were again on our merry way to the grocery store. After the car dropped me off, I watched it leave the Safeway parking lot and disappear into traffic like some sort of urban specter — one that I and many other people will likely see on the road again.

Technically, this ride was perfect. But I, along with city representatives, am still unconvinced.

Regardless, it seems that the CPUC is poised to grant these driverless car companies full, unfettered access to San Francisco's streets in the near future. As Waymo continues to argue that the best way to build trust is by riding in its cars, what the company doesn't explicitly tell you is that you are part of its learning curve. For now, city representatives have no choice but to watch and wait.

"Regulators need to know about the failures and problems," Chun said. "Not just the benefits that we all hope for."