A week before Halloween last year, city of Austin employee Rachel Castignoli sent a polite but firm email to a government relations staffer at self-driving vehicle developer Cruise. “We would like you to not operate between 5 pm and 9 pm on Halloween,” she wrote in bold text highlighted in yellow, documents obtained by WIRED through a public records request show. More children are killed by vehicles on Halloween than on any other night of the year, she wrote, and the city wanted to limit traffic—regardless of whether software or a human was behind the wheel. “Please acknowledge receipt of this email,” Castignoli concluded, also in bold, adding “Thanks!”
Castignoli’s email is an example of the strange position of officials in some US cities chosen by Cruise and rivals such as Alphabet’s Waymo as testing grounds for self-driving taxi services. Castignoli works for Austin’s Transportation and Public Works Department, which like local agencies around the country, is responsible for what happens on city streets, setting speed limits and traffic restrictions.
But in Texas, California, Arizona, and a handful of other states where self-driving vehicles are being tested and even transport paying customers, local officials’ hands are tied when it comes to robot cars, because advocates for the autonomous vehicle industry have pushed for legislation that places the power to regulate their operations in the hands of state officials. (Federal officials, meanwhile, regulate vehicle features and design.) Castignoli could only request that Cruise pause its operations, not order it to do so.
The email chain shows that Cruise agreed not to operate on Halloween, although by the time that night rolled around the company had stopped driving nationwide after a San Francisco accident. But the situation is awkward for officials in Austin and elsewhere. A public log maintained by the city of Austin shows that residents have registered at least 25 complaints about autonomous vehicle operations, including that they block traffic or cause safety concerns.
Catignoli said in an interview last month that the vehicles have sometimes made public safety officials “frustrated,” but the city can do little about such problems. “The state has power to decide who is on the roads,” Castignoli said, although she also said that Austin officials now have productive relationships with autonomous vehicle companies and that city and industry leaders meet regularly.
Other cities have been more vocal about their vexations with robot vehicles. In hearings last summer to determine whether Cruise and Waymo could carry paying passengers in San Francisco at any time, city officials brought up 55 recent incidents in which self-driving vehicles delayed traffic, public transit, and in a few cases, emergency responders. The state agency responsible for taxi services overrode those local concerns and allowed the companies to expand their deployments. Most state autonomous vehicle laws require companies to create contingency plans and guides for local law enforcement to use in case of emergency.
Read the full article here
