Officials from San Francisco and Austin, where Waymo has been transporting driverless passengers for more than a year, said the vehicles’ performance was getting worse. “We’re actually seeing something interesting: a decline in some of the things that were improved,” Mary Ellen Carroll, executive director of the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management, told officials at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which oversees self-driving vehicle safety in the United States. “They are committing more traffic violations.”
“We’ve seen some behavior that we haven’t seen in a few years… Waymo is now frequently blocking our fire stations from access,” San Francisco Fire Department Chief Patrick Rabbitt added. “Their default option is to freeze.” He said the situation could prevent fire engines from responding to emergencies in a timely and appropriate manner.
Lt. William White, chief of the Austin Police Department’s Highway Enforcement Command, said first responders in Austin were often put in a critical situation due to Waymos “freezing.” White said that, contrary to what Waymo told first responders, vehicles often fail to recognize or respond to officers’ hand signals, which can lead to cascading delays during emergencies or unusual road accidents.
“I think the technology was deployed very quickly and in very large quantities, with hundreds of vehicles, when it wasn’t really ready,” White said. NHTSA did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
The complaints come as Waymo embarks on an ambitious expansion across the U.S. and globally. Today, the company offers driverless rides in parts of 10 US cities, with plans to launch the service in 10 more before the end of the year, including London. Waymo said last month that it now offers 500,000 paid rides weekly – a number that is still dwarfed by human-powered ride-hailing services (Uber provides about 400 times that number weekly) but has increased tenfold since last year.
But such feedback from cities where the service already operates threatens to slow the spread of self-driving technology, which, according to Waymo data, reduces serious crashes compared to human-driven cars. Waymo already faces political opposition, especially from organized labor, in several dense, blue-chip and lucrative cities, including Boston, New York City, Seattle and Washington, D.C.
In a statement, Waymo spokeswoman Julia Elena wrote: “We deeply value our partnership with first responders and our shared commitment to safety. Their ongoing feedback has been instrumental in driving impactful improvements to Waymo’s service.” The company says it has conducted in-person training for more than 35,000 emergency responders across the country.
Public comment periods
The comments made at the private meeting were more pointed than what government officials have generally said publicly. But they reflect long-standing and sometimes vocal frustrations that city leaders have expressed since at least late last year. Because autonomous vehicle operations in California and Texas are regulated by state officials rather than city officials, local first responder departments and those who represent them can generally only ask developers like Waymo to make specific changes to their operations.
On Wednesday, Austin first responders appeared before the City Council to discuss Waymo’s response to an incident last month in which a self-driving car stashed an ambulance for two minutes responding to a shooting downtown, killing three people and wounding at least 14. Although officers were able to quickly contact Waymo operators to move the vehicle, they reported that it had taken up to three minutes to contact a remote customer in the past. They reiterated that Waymos do not always respond well to hand signals, especially police signals mounted on motorcycles.
Waymo declined to attend the meeting, and two chairs in the front row labeled “Reserved for: WAYMO” remained empty throughout the two-hour session.
