San Francisco is pushing California to revisit emergency management rules for auto-driving vehicles. The local mayor, Daniel Ruri, wrote to the State Department of Transport that the two recent incidents had revealed the lack of capacity of unmanned taxis to handle unusual traffic conditions and that existing regulatory requirements needed to be reinforced.

Two incidents trigger new requirements

In his letter, Luli mentioned that a massive power outage in December last year, as well as severe congestion during the Golden Gate pyrotechnic activity on 4 July, led to a number of Waymo unattended taxis on the road and further paralysed traffic.

On 4 July, some of the vehicles lost their mobility and even their power consumption during prolonged congestion, blocking critical roads, affecting both municipal access vehicles and a large number of travellers, and the problem was extended to the city as a whole.

The mayor called for state-wide standards.

According to the content of the letter seen by TechCrunch, Larry believes that California currently regulates the safe operation of the main focus auto-driving vehicles in the conventional environment, but that the rules are inadequate for situations such as large-scale events, power outages or extreme congestion.

  • The vehicle should be moved as soon as it stops. Province
  • Businesses should adjust routes and services in real time
  • The need to share real-time operational data with local institutions

He also asked enterprises to prove through testing that the system was able to cope with the surge in human and vehicle flows resulting from large-scale events, rather than maintaining normal operations only under day-to-day transport conditions.

Waymo size is the focus of regulation.

California currently has a double-licensing system for unmanned taxis, which requires firms to pass through the Motor Vehicle Administration and the Utilities Commission for testing and deployment approval, respectively. California's old rules are stricter than Texas and Arizona.

Waymo is the largest local operator. The report cites prior disclosure by the company that it operated approximately 1,000 unmanned taxis in the Bay Area, which covered 11 cities and completed over 500,000 pay trips per week.

According to Luli, Waymo had restricted services near the coast on 4 July and sent staff to the urban emergency centres, but these voluntary measures failed to stop vehicles from stalling in other congestion areas. Local governments now wish to include emergency response and data sharing in mandatory standards.