A New AV Sheriff in Town
Early autonomous vehicle rollout is following the tech industry migration patterns from San Francisco to Austin, Texas. Waymo just announced that Austin will be their next city for larger AV deployment, Cruise has been offering robo-taxi service since 2022, and just before it shut down, ArgoAI had announced plans to operate driverless AVs in Austin in 2022.
Already, Austin residents and city officials have raised concerns with the growing number of AVs on their streets, which is currently at around 125 AVs per a recent city memo. The city’s emergency responders have documented issues with the vehicles, such as a “firefighter reported the department responded to a crash in which a Cruise bus ran into a building near 12th Street and Lamar Boulevard. The firefighter said they witnessed representatives for Cruise trying to move the bus via a computer, but they couldn't.”
In response, or in anticipation, the City of Austin rapidly created an “AV Safety Task Force” and is working with the cities of San Francisco, Seattle, and others, as well as the Texas Department of Transportation’s emerging technologies group to ensure safe and responsible AV operation. Because Texas passed a law that pre-empted any cities from regulating, the City of Austin cannot, legally, impose any direct regulations on AV companies operating in their city.
That doesn’t seem to be stopping them, however, from forming the necessary structures to effectively regulate safe AVs in their city. According to the city’s September 1st Memo, the AV Safety Task Force was formed to “share information and create a collaborative approach to identifying and communicating AV safety in our community,” and it conducts critical safety tasks, such as:
Collects feedback from residents (via 311, Council Offices, directly to TPW, etc);
Collects feedback from public safety (via email and incident reports);
Gathers data from all incidents and communications to create maps, analyze trends, and communicate issues with AV companies;
Facilitates training with public safety and AV companies;
Works with AV companies to improve data, identify safety concerns, communicate about special events, and ensure they have proper charging facilities for their fleets; and
Meets with peer city entities to discuss policy and procedures.
AV safety expert, Phil Koopman, recently talked about all the reasons why “Municipal Preemption” (forbidding cities to regulate AVs) is a bad idea and why there are many good reasons that cities, and only cities, should regulate certain aspects of AVs, such as, “forbid testing for specific situations: School zones during student transit time, [and] parades, fires, 1st amendment events, [and] construction.”
AV companies had a premature fear that their biggest risk was from outside regulators blocking them from commercial opportunities, and that preempting cities from imposing additional regulations would ensure their success faster.
Today, it is clear that the complete opposite is true. The AV companies’ biggest risk is from within their own organizations: if they cannot prevent unwanted behavior from creeping out into society in an uncontrollable manner, they will lose access to their market.
Instead of preemption, AV companies should be working closely with their market cities to tailor hand-in-glove solutions to this new technology and service. Cities are naturally AV companies’ biggest partners and they can be their best advocates on public safety. In 2024 we will see a shift by those remaining AV companies with commercial viability to work quickly to undo the city preemption laws, and embrace unorthodox measures such as sharing sensitive data and being subject to day-to-day oversight of where and when they can operate. Why? In order to get access to long-term, sustainable profits necessary for real business planning, which they’ve gotten close to, but can never reach on their current path.
The AV companies and cities can work together to play “good cop,” “bad cop” with the common goal of making sure AVs never behave in a way that would cause them to lose their market, which can happen through any number of unpleasant responses. In fact, that already worked with the CA DMV restriction of Cruise’s San Francisco fleet to 50% following an accident with a fire truck, as it helps both sides foster public trust and make a meaningful impact in public safety on the roads.
When it comes to AV and city partnerships, the City of Austin is already the industry’s leading partner in their path to success. The city has created their pro-active AV Safety Task Force, and, unlike some of the other main cities where AVs are operating, Austin is the state’s capitol, so it’s already in the State of Texas regulatory back yard, so to speak. If Austin succeeds in being the new “Sheriff” of safe AVs in the cities, they will set the precedent for many to follow around the world. In doing so, they could attract even more AV companies to come play a role in establishing truly safe operations on public roads.
If you think cities should retain authority of AV safety on their public streets, please comment below. If you think AV developers are already commercially viable, or don’t have safety as their primary hurdle, please share your thoughts. If you would like to learn more about how safety-critical data can be shared between AV companies and city regulators in a transparent and meaningful way, contact us for a one-on-one phone call to learn about Retrospect’s AV real-time safety monitoring and reporting tools.