Will San Francisco allow self driving car usage to expand?

Radio reports here this morning say there’s a dispute between San Francisco city officials and the self-driving car companies. SF city says they fail too often and clog intersections. Car companies apparently respond that they are working on it.

Who holds ultimate authority? SF City? National Highway Safety Commission? Somebody else?

“[self driving car] companies have requested permission from the California Public Utilities Commission to charge money for driverless rides across the city and around the clock. But until the services are better understood, the city said, it does not want them operating in downtown San Francisco or during peak commuting times in the morning or evening.”

If above link doesn’t work, try Googling “San Francisco Waymo”, link may work from Google search results.

Only San Francisco can answer that question.

My crystal ball says… Maybe, but after discussing it for at least 5 years.

Why do people keep siting problems with autonomous vehicles when they aren’t ready for prime time yet. At best some autonomous vehicles have just reached level 3. For fully autonomous driving they need to be level 5. It’s still many years way. It’s like people complaining about colonizing Mars, when we haven’t even figured out how to send people there safely.

At this stage of development, I’m sure that the local SF government is in the best position to determine what is reasonable within the city boundaries. There is no need to involve the CA government unless the issue spills over to surrounding localities and they have different rules concerning autonomous vehicles.

Totally concur. The problem is the city may not have the legal authority to regulate self driving cars. Applicable law may specify the feds or the state have it, not the city. In which case SF city is at the mercy of the feds or state.

Not sure of your point. Are you saying San Francisco shouldn’t be allowing self driving cars on city streets with no driver at all b/c they aren’t ready for that?

Maybe? Check it out and get back to us. I still suspect that as long as it only pertains to San Francisco and not surrounding jurisdictions, Cali won’t get involved.

Yes…They shouldn’t. This is just another example of NOT following the recommendations of the engineers (aka IEEE and SAE) autonomous vehicle standards. Why are they pushing it?

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