Ban for Light-duty Autonomous Vehicles and Green Light for Autonomous Trucks?

General Motors-owned Cruise and Alphabet-owned Waymo are currently the only companies with permission to offer driverless rides to customers in San Francisco. Now, after both companies have had their fully driverless vehicles on San Francisco streets for several months, it is becoming clear that driverless vehicles have a hard time responding to complex traffic situations. In July, a group of driverless Cruise robotaxi blocked traffic for hours after the cars stopped working without explanation. A similar incident happened later in September. A Waymo robotaxi created a traffic jam after it stopped in the middle of an intersection.

However, these incidents are not the only reason city officials want to slow the expansion of driverless robotaxis. They express concern over the way driverless vehicles deal with emergency vehicles. Last April, a Cruise vehicle stopped in a lane, blocking a fire department vehicle. Later, Cruise vehicles called 911 about unresponsive passengers on three separate occasions. When emergency service arrived, they found that the riders had merely fallen asleep. While the San Francisco Transportation Authority supports the expansion of driverless technology, it wants more transparency and additional safeguards put in place. They want companies to collect more data about the performance of their vehicles, including how often and how long their vehicles block traffic. Moreover, it also wants to restrict AV companies from operating on “downtown core streets” during peak travel hours until they prove that they can operate without significant interruption of traffic.

Unlike autonomous robotaxis, state officials in California are revisiting a state-wide policy that prohibits all self-driving semi-trucks on its roads. In response to this potential move to open the state to autonomous trucking opposition has arisen. Two state legislators filed new legislation requiring a trained safety driver behind the wheel of any autonomous vehicle that weighs more than 10,001 pounds (4536 kg), just in case the State relaxes restrictions on autonomous trucks. The purported purpose of this legislation is twofold: to keep California roadways safe and to protect the livelihoods of truck drivers across the state, which is a concern for those that might lose their job to these new machines: “We also cannot overlook the potential cuts to good jobs and how these jobs support the livelihoods of so many California families”, said Joe Garner, a member of Teamsters Local 315, a labour union.

The potential relaxing of prohibition on autonomous trucking is welcomed by some, especially industry players. Multiple companies are already testing autonomous trucks in other states, and California may become an outlier in the country if these opposition bills comes to pass.

Personal Comment:

These two cases might seem a little bit contradictory at first sight. On the one hand, we are slowing down the expansion of light-duty autonomous vehicles due to safety concerns. On the other hand, California officials are reconsidering the prohibition of heavy-duty autonomous vehicles from operating on public roads. And I must emphasize that this happens in the same state. When we think about the difference between small and much lighter robotaxis and the full-sized trucks it seems an odd direction to move in. On the face of it robotaxis appear to be safer, so why restrict them while at the same time reverse the ban on trucks?

However, looking at the situation more closely they don’t really conflict. For example, the San Francisco Transportation Authority requires companies to collect more data, in particular data in instances where autonomous vehicles stopped responding or did not respond in the way they were supposed to. This is extremely beneficial for the improvement and further development of autonomous technologies, since companies get real data, which is usually difficult to get during testing. So, I think these two cases don’t conflict considering the complexity of each of them. In fact, they can complement each other. Collecting and analysing more data on edge cases and in complex traffic situations will improve not only the autonomous technologies of light-duty vehicles, but also of autonomous trucks.

Written by Kateryna Melnyk,
RISE Mobility & Systems