Worrisome incidents involving driverless cars in San Francisco are on the rise and are averaging about 90 reports a month, the head of San Francisco’s Municipal Transit Authority told MarketWatch in a recent interview.
The SFMTA also would like a more gradual expansion of autonomous cars, with limitations — like the next level of a “learner’s permit.” While Safe Street Rebel has the same concerns as the SFMTA about the need for self-driving companies to share more data with regulators, the act of placing safety cones on top of the driverless cars is actually worsening the current problem. The SFMTA said it does not endorse any actions that may increase the number of disabled vehicles on San Francisco streets.
Tumlin said that while the CPUC agrees that the current state of data is incomplete, the regulator disagrees with the SFMTA’s conclusions. One example cited in the protest letter was the SFMTA’s conclusion that based on Cruise data currently available, from June 2022 to February 2023, the rate of collisions — none of which resulted in injuries — “appears to exceed the collision rate for human drivers.” This was described in the CPUC’s draft resolution on Cruise as a “good safety record.