Driverless Cars

As many San Francisco residents may know, driverless cars have been a fairly popular addition to our roads for years now. Before we wrap up our piece on driverless cars and different generation’s views on them, we also would like to include information on how these cars have impacted our San Francisco traffic. According to an article posted a few months ago by The Washington Post, “Google-owned Waymo and General Motors’ Cruise are some of the companies testing their autonomous technology here, training the cars on how to share the roads with less predictable humans, and navigate real world situations,” (Heather Kelly). We are confident that by now, everyone driving or using public transportation in the city has encountered these cars at least once a day. However, the increased use of these vehicles has “[…] led to an uptick in incidents, residents say, from harmless traffic jams to accidents such as the rear-ending of a public bus,” (Kelly). It seems as if the fear of increasing traffic accidents from our previous survey data, and data from the Pew Research Center, proves to be true with San Francisco’s driverless cars. This is mainly due to the cars’ lack of readiness to conquer the unexpected traffic situations that can be thrown at you. It produces the issue of these cars becoming confused, freezing, or crashing when they are met with a new scenario that they have not been programmed with (Kelly). This unfortunate confusion displayed by Waymo and Cruise cars incites a more dire effect on the city’s roads as “[…] the cars struggle at emergency sites. At one active fire, a firefighter had to break out the window of the Cruise car to stop it from running over a hose,” (Kelly). By fully reflecting on these driverless cars’ influence as of late on our roads, it seems their addition has resulted in more negative influences rather than positive influences. We can only hope that these car companies within San Francisco, as well as other cities using autonomous vehicles, realize that if they wish to continue utilizing these cars, they must work to find ways for the cars to continue sharing the road with other vehicles in a strictly safe manner so our roads are no longer filled with confusion and accidents.

The people of San Francisco never had a vote to allow driverless cars to be tested in the city. The big technology and automotive companies were only given permission by some state agencies and the DMV(California Department of Motor Vehicles). San Francisco is also limited in how much it can manage the testing programs, which is described in the article as it states “In January, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority wrote a 23-page letter to state agencies outlining the city’s concerns about autonomous vehicles and protesting the companies’ plans for expansion. Cruise wants to expand its paid ride-hailing service to the entire city without time restrictions,” (Kelly). They became concerned about driverless cars due to the company growing more unresponsive. Due to this, local officials have been more concerned about the safety, transparency, and inconvenience.