San Francisco looks to hit brakes on self-driving cars

San Francisco is trying to slow the expansion of robotaxis after repeated incidents in which cars without drivers stopped and idled in the middle of the street.

SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco is trying to slow the expansion of robotaxis after repeated incidents in which cars without drivers stopped and idled in the middle of the street for no obvious reason, delaying bus riders and disrupting the work of firefighters. 

The city’s transportation officials sent letters this week to California regulators asking them to halt or scale back the expansion plans of two companies, Cruise and Waymo, which are competing head-to-head to be the first to offer 24-hour robotaxi service in the country’s best-known tech hub. 

The outcome will determine how quickly San Francisco and possibly other cities forge ahead with driverless technology that could remake the world’s cities and potentially save some of the 40,000 people killed each year in American traffic crashes.

The episode adds another chapter to the complicated history of self-driving cars, an idea that has been teased by technologists as a possibility in the future while facing a variety of setbacks in the past few years. Waymo offers fully autonomous rides in Phoenix, while Tesla lets some of its owners test “driver assistance” features that are the subject of a federal investigation. A self-driving Uber test vehicle struck and killed a woman in 2018. 

Some believe self-driving cars will never happen on a wide scale, but they’ve been gaining momentum in San Francisco. 

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/san-francisco-looks-hit-brakes-self-driving-cars-rcna66204

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