(San Francisco) In the darkness of San Francisco, a driverless taxi slows down as masked figures surround it like a hunted animal. One of the men places a cone on the hood: taken aback, the autonomous car turns on its hazard warning lights and stops in the middle of the lane.
Last week, this curious merry-go-round repeated itself dozens of times in the tech capital. A group of activists have fun disabling robot taxis at night to protest their proliferation, a source of friction between the Californian state and local elected officials.
“We think all cars are bad, no matter who or what drives,” balances AFP Alex (first name changed), an idealist from the Safe Street Rebel collective, radically pro-pedestrian and pro-bike.
For him, this futuristic vehicle is “not a revolutionary new mode of transport”, just “another means of establishing the domination of the car”.
With simple construction cones, the group manages to immobilize the robot taxis of Waymo and Cruise, the two operators authorized in San Francisco, for several minutes, until the intervention of a technician.
Their action accumulates millions of views on social networks and stirs up controversy, just as California is considering allowing these companies to offer a paid service in the city, 24 hours a day.
The California Public Utilities Commission, responsible for overseeing autonomous vehicles, may soon allow Waymo and Cruise to expand their services. They would then work like the Uber or Lyft apps, but without drivers.
Cradle of self-driving cars
A prospect that makes the municipality cringe. San Francisco may be the cradle of self-driving cars – the first began to circulate there in 2014 with a “safety” driver – but she is worried about the multiplication of incidents involving robot taxis.
For the past year, their experimentation no longer requires having a human behind the wheel in case of unforeseen events. Coming across a Jaguar with no one behind the wheel is part of everyday life, not science fiction.
The total robotization of experimentation is accompanied by inconvenience. Cars stopped on the road, blocking the bus line or crashing into a crime scene in the face of angry police officers: Cruise and Waymo vehicles are singled out, even if no fatal accident for humans has been listed.
In early June, a Waymo robo-taxi hit a dog suddenly appearing in the street. The animal is dead.
A few days later, a member of the San Francisco City Council, Aaron Peskin, denounced “the CPUC’s hasty decision to allow a massive increase in traffic (robot taxis) on our streets”.
The city opposes the State of California, the sole decision maker. This winter, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority sent a letter to the CPUC listing 92 self-driving car crashes.
The controversy seems to take hold: the CPUC, which was to authorize Waymo and Cruise at the end of June to extend their services, has twice postponed its decision, now expected on August 10.
Currently, Cruise is only allowed to charge for groceries between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. Waymo can’t charge without a human behind the wheel. Under this experimental regime, however, the two companies have retained customers.
Security, in debate
Jaeden Sterling thus embarks daily on board a robot-taxi.
“I use them mostly for convenience and safety,” says the 18-year-old.
From the back seat of a Waymo car, he monitors on a screen the vehicles, pedestrians, and other cyclists detected in real time by the software.
This inspires him more confidence than the “dangerous” driving of many VTC drivers who “are in a hurry, because their salary is based on the number of races they take”.
The untimely stops of autonomous vehicles appear to him rather as a pledge of caution.
Security is also the main argument hammered home by Waymo and Cruise.
Waymo’s robot taxis have traveled “more than a million kilometers” without “any collision involving pedestrians or cyclists”, the company reminds AFP. As for collisions with vehicles, they “involved violations of the rules or unsafe behavior on the part of human drivers”.
But some residents remain wary.
“Even if they were really safer, what is the guarantee that a really dangerous problem will not appear in production next week? asks Cyrus Hall, 43.
For this IT engineer, the current incidents are too important to be ignored. Especially since San Francisco serves as an example, in a country where autonomous cars are now arriving in Los Angeles, Phoenix or Austin.
“If they are allowed to become a full-fledged business […]the battle will be much more difficult than ensuring that we have a good regulatory framework now,” he insists.