Emergency first-responder leaders in San Francisco and Austin told federal regulators in a private March meeting they were frustrated with the performance of autonomous vehicles (AVs). Firefighters, police, EMTs, and paramedics are forced to spend time during emergencies resolving issues with frozen or stuck cars. One fire official called them “a safety issue for our crews, as well as the victims.”
Officials in both San Francisco and Austin said the vehicles’ performance has gotten worse this past year. They describe a “backsliding” of some things that had been improved upon, adding that the AVs are committing more traffic violations.
“Waymo is frequently now blocking our fire stations from access,” said Chief Patrick Rabbitt, head of the San Francisco Fire Department. Their default is to “freeze,” he said, which can delay firetrucks from responding to emergencies.
In Austin, first responders have been frequently stymied by Waymos “freezing up,” said Lieutenant William White, head of Highway Enforcement Command at the Austin Police Department. White said that, contrary to what Waymo had told first responders, the vehicles often fail to recognize or respond to officers’ hand signals, which can lead to cascading delays during emergencies or unusual road incidents.
“I believe the technology was deployed too quickly in too vast amounts, with hundreds of vehicles, when it wasn’t really ready,” White said.
The complaints come as Waymo embarks on an ambitious expansion across the US and the world, even as the company is facing political opposition, especially from organized labor, in several dense and potentially lucrative cities.
The comments from the private meeting are harsher than what government officials have generally said in public – but they reflect long-simmering and sometimes vocal frustrations expressed by city leaders since at least late last year. Comments to federal regulators zeroed in on what they called Waymo’s “human element” – the remote support teams meant to quickly respond to safety-related requests. Every minute counts in an emergency, and officers have been frustrated that they had to stop and speak with Waymo’s remote operators to fix tricky situations from afar.
Source: Wired
