Waymo/Cruise Butt Heads With San Francisco Officials Over Robotaxi Stall-Outs.

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The robotaxi companies still haven't resolved differences with San Francisco, and they still aren't speaking the same lanaguage

Read more at Forbes.com in Waymo/Cruise Butt Heads With San Francisco Officials Over Robotaxi Stall-Outs.

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You say that the cities shouldn't be solving these public nuisance problems, and that the CPUC shouldn't either. So what does a citizen need to do to get the DMV to do their job?

Also, autonomous vehicle promoters always remind us how much safer they are. And yet, when the people responsible for public safety say, "we expect these cars to respond to instructions from our employees as promptly as humans do", you say, "perhaps the teams haven't worked hard on this yet". That's a double standard: you tell me I have to share the road with unreliable computer programs to test them, but give them a pass on doing one of the most important tasks of a road user, which is to respect the instructions of the humans who run the system.

This whole CPUC situation has been a mess of bad behavior driven by self-interest (looking at Cruise's creative lawyering and the taxi guys) but on the other hand, at least it has laid bare the double standards at work.

Looking forward to the DMV getting involved, or the legislature. Or a ballot measure to outlaw them entirely!

There is absolutely a double standard, and should be, as there is for student drivers -- we tolerate a bit more from them while they are learning, in the hopes they will become better drivers when mature. (Actually, we tolerate a LOT. Young drivers have far more accidents and fatalities compared to mature ones.)

It is necessary that the vehicles be given leeway to make mistakes in these early small deployments. That is how the mistakes are discovered and corrected. They would not be tolerated in mature systems.

How to get the DMV to act? They work for the governor and legislature, whom you elect. That's how all government works. Does it work well? Probably not. What is the better solution? Should each individual town regulate the rules of the road?

The only reason the CPUC was involved was that the companies were up for permits, and the city officials, lacking authority to regulate the vehicles, reached out to the ones who happened to be doing it right now. They did this in spite of the fact the CPUC's job is to regulate transportation services that serve the public, nothing to do with how unmanned vehicles interact with other vehicles, unless it presents a danger to passengers.

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