Autonomous vehicle updates and actions – March 13, 2024

Hello Friends and Allies,

I hope you are all healthy, happy, and safe. A lot of this repeats my last email sent in early February, but there is some new information and a correction about the court cases:

State legislation introduced:

State legislators have introduced four pieces of legislation so far this year to increase the oversight of autonomous vehicles. State Senator Dave Cortese (D-San Jose) has introduced legislation that would, if passed and signed by the governor, establish local authorizing power over autonomous vehicle passenger services and the corporations that own them — Waymo, the suspended Cruise, and all others wishing to flood California streets with AVs transporting passengers for a fare (autonomous vehicle passenger services or AVPS). His legislation is SB 915.  Additionally, Assemblymember Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) has introduced AB 1777 to strengthen the regulation of autonomous vehicles, especially concerning ticketing for moving violations. AB 2286 requires AV companies to report collisions that involve property damage, injuries, or death within 10 days of the event. Assemblymember Matt Haney (D-San Francisco) has introduced AB 3061, imposing reporting requirements for traffic violations, as well as collisions. The only bill that has moved into committee so far is SB 915. SB 915 will be heard in two committees — Local Government, chaired by State Senator Maria Durazo, and Transportation, chaired by State Senator Dave Cortese.

To do — send individual and organizational letters of support:

SB 915 will be heard in the State Senate Local Government Committee on April 3. Please send individual and organizational letters of support for SB 915 as soon as possible. Submit one to the chair of the Local Government Committee, Maria Durazo, and another to the chair of the Transportation Committee, Dave Cortese. You can submit both in the same Position Letter Portal here. I have attached template letters for each committee.

If you are a member of an endorsing organization, it’s important that your organization consider endorsing the legislation and sending correspondence (preferably on letterhead) to the appropriate committee so that it is included in the bill analysis. We can expect pushback from the AV corporations and their lobbyists. I am pretty busy, but if your organization needs a presenter, let me know. If I can’t be present, I might be able to find someone who can be. But please get these pieces of legislation on the agendas of your organizations. If your organization doesn’t have time to agendize these pieces of legislation, send in individual letters.

(Livable California also has a guide for how to submit individual and organizational letters here.) 

Caveat:

Establishing local authorizing control as quickly as possible is important — AV corporations are racing to expand their operations. But getting legislation passed to establish local control is only half the battle. In San Francisco, the taxi division of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is the division that would likely regulate autonomous vehicle passenger services. However, this division negotiated to let Uber start the takeover of the local taxi industry in 2022. We will need to be very organized and clear that we do not want corporate giveaways like that one.

The status of Cruise:

On February 6, representatives of Cruise appeared before the California Public Utilities Commission for an assessment of the fine that Cruise should pay for violations related to a Cruise vehicle dragging a woman for 20 feet on October 2, 2023. Both the California Department of Motor Vehicles and the California Public Utilities Commission indefinitely suspended Cruise’s permits to operate vehicles autonomously in California after that incident. Cruise subsequently pulled all its autonomous vehicles off the road nationwide. Meanwhile, the law firm Quinn Emmanual Urquhart & Sullivan released a report on this incident and Cruise’s response. I have not had a chance to read the report, but according to Michael Smith, the report leaves out key details. While Cruise could be liable for more than a million dollars in fines, it has angled for a puny $75,000 in exchange for sharing more accident data with the CPUC. Ricardo Cano and the SF Chronicle did a breakdown of the events that led to a woman being dragged for 20 feet beneath a Cruise here. Administrative Law Judge Robert Mason is scheduled to issue a decision about what to fine Cruise this spring.

San Francisco’s efforts for a rehearing — denied:

The San Francisco City Attorney’s office also filed a request for a rehearing of the original, August 10 CPUC authorization in which three out of four commissioners present voted to authorize unlimited numbers of Cruises and Waymos to operate 24/7 in every neighborhood of San Francisco. That rehearing request was based, in part, on the absence of an environmental impact report. The original August 10 authorization held out the possibility of a future EIR. That request for a rehearing was denied on November 8, 2023. In that denial, the CPUC now said that state law precluded an EIR, but I explain here why I think the CPUC is wrong (note, I am not a lawyer; I just read the law carefully).

Appealing the denial and the absence of an EIR:

The San Francisco City Attorney’s office has since filed two suits according to this SF Examiner article — one at the California First District Court of Appeal and the other at the California Supreme Court. The one at the appellate court — case number A169262 — is challenging the CPUC’s August 10 authorization and its November 8 denial of the rehearing. The one filed at the California Supreme Court is presumably challenging the absence of an EIR, court case #S283446. I haven’t read the briefs for either case.

A Waymo hits a bicyclist and vandals hit a Waymo:

Neither are good. The point of the first is the CEOs — do you trust them to get the safety thing right? (I mean, do you trust the CEOs of Boeing?) They have investors to answer to and are motivated by greed. The bicyclist was like the stable lad hoofed by Boxer the workhorse in Animal Farm when the animals finally rebel — merely knocked over. He got up and rode away. But who’s to know how safe our streets will be when more of these vehicles are out there? The people who torched the Waymo during Lunar New Year celebrations endangered the neighborhood and diverted first responders from other emergencies.

Submitting comments & reporting incidents:

Members of the public can continue to submit comments to the CPUC about its rule-making related to autonomous vehicle passenger services here.

Reporting incidents to the California DMV:

On the morning of February 16, I photographed a Waymo blocking the entrance to the Mission High School parking lot as people were trying to pull in. I reported that incident to the CADMV here.

Keeping track of incidents and following the news:

Safe Street Rebel is keeping track of incidents with AVs, and Robotaxi.rodeo is tracking the news. In the news: the one CPUC commissioner who voted against the authorization on August 10, 2023, Genevieve Shiroma, resigned on March 1, the day that the CPUC authorized the expansion of AVPS up and down the peninsula. She has been replaced by Matt Baker. (Note: the holy grail of expansion on the peninsula is access to the airports — but the SFO airport commission has to approve their access first.)

Anyway, it’s about time we’re challenging the mantra of moving fast and breaking things.

Please submit your letters!

Thank you.

Sue Vaughan