Amid a rush to get more robotaxis on the roads of California’s largest cities, the fire chief in San Francisco has warned the vehicles are “not ready for primetime”, citing multiple recent incidents of the vehicles obstructing fire engines and blocking roads during emergencies.
Driverless cars have become a growing nuisance for San Francisco’s residents and officials alike. Of particular concern for police and firefighters is the unwelcome appearance of robotaxis at the scene of an emergency that hinders their work.
So far in 2023, the San Francisco police department has logged nearly 40 incidents where a robotaxi interfered with fire department work, according to the Los Angeles Times. The fire departments told the outlet that incidents have included cars blocking one-way streets and firehouse driveways, forcing fire trucks to find alternate routes to get to blazes.
Other incidents that have attracted headlines included a Cruise robotaxi that appeared to idle in the midst of a mass shooting for several minutes in early June, while in January a firefighter was reportedly forced to break the window of a Cruise vehicle to stop it after the car nearly drove over hoses that were being used to put out a raging house fire.
Cruise has denied blocking emergency personnel “at any point” while they responded to the shooting that injured nine people. “Our car initially stopped as it was approaching an active emergency scene, then proceeded to perform a U-turn and pull over,” a spokesperson told the Guardian. “Throughout this time, all vehicles, including emergency response vehicles, were able to proceed around our car.”
Such incidents have become more common since June 2022 when state officials granted Cruise, a company controlled by the automaker General Motors, approval to launch its driverless ride-hailing service on certain streets in San Francisco. In April, the company got permission from city leaders to operate anywhere in the city 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Amid this expansion other companies, including Waymo, a Google spinoff and Zoox, which is owned by Amazon, have sought approval to operate in San Francisco as well as Los Angeles.
The California department of motor vehicles has logged nearly 70 autonomous vehicle collision reports this year, including a 21 May incident in San Francisco in which a dog was struck and killed by a Waymo vehicle operating in autonomous mode but with an employee in the front seat, according to the DMV report.
Though no one has been killed or reported being seriously injured due to a robotaxi obstructing emergency crews, the San Francisco fire chief, Jeanine Nicholson, urged the state to move more slowly. “I don’t want something bad to happen because we can’t get to a scene. A fire can double in size in a minute. We are dealing with life and death and I’m not being dramatic in saying that,” she told the LA Times.
“I’m not against the technology,” she continued. “But we need to fix what’s not working right now, before they are unleashed on the rest of the city.”
