All drivers driving safely is very important to me as a motorcycle rider because I am much more vulnerable on two-wheels than people traveling in four-wheeled vehicles.
Over the past couple years self-driving cars have been and continue to be tested on the streets of San Francisco. For those of you who have not witnessed self-driving cars, come to San Francisco to see self-driving cars roaming the streets like a Roomba trying to navigate furniture. They are a source of congestion and frustration.
I think that self-driving cars need pass the DMV driving test before they can operate on the public road. Human drivers are required to demonstrate a minimal level of proficiency before they are permitted to drive on public roads. Self-driving cars should be required to do the same.
I have been living and driving in San Francisco for twenty-two years. In the past couple years I have witnessed self-driving cars on the road weekly. These days it’s mostly the Cruise vehicles. Often they are stopped or stopping in an inappropriate place to stop. They have trouble starting when the light turns green. They randomly stop in traffic without any visible reason. They are moving slowly, starting and stopping intermittently.
I will share one personal anecdote. I was riding on Bush Street, mid-morning, behind a Cruise vehicle. We were in the middle lane out of three lanes traveling one-way. Bush is a street where the lights are timed and traffic moves steadily at 20-30 mph. Mid-block, between Steiner and Fillmore, the Cruise vehicle suddenly stopped. There was no obstruction in the road. The vehicles to the lanes to the left and right of our lane kept moving forward. The Cruise vehicle’s behavior was highly unpredictable and dangerous. Stopping suddenly for no reason puts me (the vehicle directly behind) at risk of hitting them or being hit by the vehicle behind me. Any collision, regardless of the circumstances, is hazardous to a two-wheeled vehicle.
Driving predictably is essential to safety on the road. Drivers anticipate how other drivers will behave so that they can react appropriately. On a basic level we assume other drivers will stay in their lane, stop when the light is red, and go when the light is green. For more complex behavior, we need to determine when to pass a driver who is looking for parking or when to move out of the way of someone in a rush. Self-driving cars behave in unpredictable, erratic ways, thus creating a hazard on the road.
Self-driving cars in California are required to collect data on their performance annually. While the data collection isn’t very rigorous or consistent across all companies, it still provides some valuable information. In 2017 the majority of reasons for “disengagements” (when the human driver need to take control of the vehicle) are due to technology failures.1 They need to solve their technology problems before moving onto the more complex problems of real-world conditions.
Self-driving vehicles are a long way from being able to operate independently. One sophisticated problem that isn’t even being addressed is how a self-driving car can quickly communicate with other road users (drivers, cyclists, pedestrians). Humans regularly scan the road and other users to determine a number of things, such as where the user’s attention is directed, whether the other user sees them, confirming users see each other by making eye contact. Self-driving cars cannot detect these things nor communicate them to others. Without solving this, self-driving cars will not be able to smoothly integrate into vehicular circulation.
Minimally, we need to require all drivers (even the self-driving cars) to pass a DMV test.