Driverless cars in the Bay Area and the use as ROBO-Taxis; Waymo's plans to expand on the road

this afternoon we're diving into the growing presence of autonomous cars here in the Bay Area and the use of them as Robo taxis several companies are out on the streets right now touting the convenience of this technology but what about the glitches and concerns about safety our Kenny Choy starts our conversation in San Francisco where there's one spot that wayo cars seem to have tough time navigating Rosemary desna has lived in San Francisco's Telegraph neighborhood for decades we have a main thorough fair and a lot of small streets that feed into it with a lot of weird directionals five-way streets and that kind of stuff she chooses to walk when she can and is acutely aware of her surroundings lately with more Robo taxis passing by I've just noticed a lot of um car you know driverless cars getting stuck the way Brian Culbertson who was visiting qu Tower nearby recorded and posted on X this video of a wh getting stuck at the turnaround on Greenwich Street he declined to be interviewed on camera residents know the tight turn at the dead end can present some issues this turnaround is hard for everybody uh because they don't know that it's a turnaround ahed BFA is a professor of engineering at San Jose State people are using them and and that's why I hear about more problem because you discover new scenarios that didn't never thought about it BFA believes each hiccup is a chance foro to prove its product and acknowledge imperfections along the way the company should be upfront about it and fix it and say we know what's wrong with this this this scenario we we fixed it it's not going to happen again please close thead despite the latest bump in the road BFA believes s915 a bill that would give local governments authority over where Robo taxis can be deployed would create a nightmare where an autonomous vehicle would be allowed in one city and then stopped at the boorder of the next city that might not allow AVS residents like Eileen iari have witnessed stranded Whos too I have seen whmo cars up come in and go at too sharp of an angle and then stop and not know what to do but she also sees the upside of driverless taxis like for her daughter-in-law who takes Late Night Trips as a nurse I didn't have to deal with a driver that I didn't know getting in a foreign car I just got in told said where I was going and it took me there very smoothly this pedestrian crossing a street in North Beach shook her head in disbelief as the wayo rightfully stopped and turned after the path cleared my motiv uper on day is to uh wait for those cars to pass in traffic before I make my moves Crossing as a pedestrian some are very comfortable with the white Robo taxis expanding across the bay area Rosemary desna is cautious now weo did not respond to our specific questions about the stranded cars as for that state bill that would let local governments weigh in on Robo taxi operations on their streets it has passed the senate floor and will be taken up by the assembly weo is also under a federal scrutiny the national highway traffic safety administration launched a probe earlier this month citing 22 incidents where weo cars got into an accident or violated traffic laws and last Thursday the agency said it learned of nine more cases in including one in San Francisco where a wh Mo drove the wrong way on a one-way Street the office said it's not aware of any injuries in any of these cases weo says it will continue to work with the federal agency it said in a statement they currently serve over 50,000 weekly trips in some of the most complex environments and they are proud of their performance and safety record they added they are committed to transparency when it comes to safety and the national highway safety administration has also launched a probe in Amazon Robo taxi company zuk two of those Vehicles were rear-ended after suddenly breaking in traffic and the agency is also looking into Cruz which had its permits to operate in California pulled State Regulators said Cruz misled them about an accident where the car hit and dragged a woman who was thrown into its path by another car Sil ahead we talked live with the Bay Area professor of transportation and Innovation about the benefits and the drop backs of these Robo taxis plus weo planning to expand South in the Bay Area why some lawmakers are pushing to pump the [Music] brakes this half hour We're exploring the growing presence of driverless cars here in the Bay Area and for the past few months people have been calling rides from Google's autonomous car company weo here in San Francisco through the app now the company plans to test rides on the peninsula at first only weo employees could ride as far south as San Mato with plans to expand to Sunnyville but the company is running into a little resistance as our Kenny Choy reports some critics say the expansion is Just Happening too fast when a driverless car struts by and catches eyes people stop and stare Rick galano has noticed too he's always looking for the next best mode of transportation whatever makes it easier is critical when that commute is every day I work two job I'm able to rest in between riding the bus he rides the bus uses an e scooter and a ride hailing service if the weather gets nasty lately the San Francisco native has been using weo occasionally for more reasons than just one I don't have to deal with drivers that are that have bad attitude cuz it's driver you know with weo expanding to the peninsula for the first time Rick believes it could become part of his regular commute to San Bruno if the ride Fair makes economic sense I jumped into one to take it for a ride hello from weo and see what the hype is all about a few minutes in by chance on our way to the destination I punched in we approached a construction zone he's giving the slow sign it slowed down navigated the cones and came out the other end without a hitch Ahmed BFA is a professor of engineering at San Jose State the future is driverless all of us knows that it's a matter of when and also a matter of who who will gain dominance in a driverless world it's a very tight robe that they are walking gain the trust gain the the market share before Tesla comes into play before crws come back thanks but it's not full throttle forward for weo just yet as lawmakers unions and First Responders have been critical questioning it safety among other concerns Sano County Supervisor David canipa opposes wh's expansion he wants more data and transparency related to any safety issues near crashes and more we need to put guard rails and that means wh Mo has to communicate uh with police Chiefs Fire Chiefs um they have to communicate with Department of Public Works once once you gain this trust and people are used to it and not afraid of seeing it on their you know on their roads on their streets then it's going to the the human driver will disappear in that case it's going to be really an autonomous driverless cars that's part of the conundrum for Rick galano what could make his commute easier and cheaper one day could come at a cost I can see like Uber drivers and lift drivers losing their jobs because you have automated cars that are moving out there just like that the driver is out of sight when we asked the company for a timeline to all this weo didn't give us answer but simply said that the expansion will take some time the company told us they will work closely with cities and First Responders to ensure that they are offering rides that are safe and accessible and still ahead a plan to use Robo taxis as Transit the major project in the works in contracosta county and we are counting down to the Oakland Ballers first home game at rayi Park it's Tuesday June 4th and remember you can catch the Ballers on Friday nights on pix plus 44 cable 12 the first televised game is a week from Friday June 7th at 6:30 well this half half hour we're talking Robo taxis and safety joining me now is Billy rigs a professor of transportation and Innovation at the University of San Francisco thanks so much for being here yeah thanks for having me all right let's get to it is there really anything stopping weo I mean money public acceptance is it full steam ahead I think it's full Full Speed Ahead for for wh Mo I mean I think they're they're well capitalized they've got great technology and um I think there's a lot of opportunity for them to really prove that you know Automation and safe driving has a future not only in San Francisco but Way Beyond now is it essentially in in the terms of the race to who's going to end up on top of all this it's really wayos to lose right Cruz is out zuk's and which is essentially Amazon is slow going same as same with Tesla you know does weo they're kind of at the top right now right well I think wh Mo's done a really good job of I think uh winning over a public opinion and um you know weo has been at this a long time longer than any other company uh backed originally by Google uh alphabet and spun off so they've got the history but you know I think I think we can't count out Cruz I think Cruz has great technology um they still have over a billion dollars in cash so you know I think but really we Mo has an edge now because of their ability to charge for rides and um you know we estimate there're still you know 10 million rides um 10 million miles done and probably adding on about 150,000 miles daily so that that that driver is getting better and better and better and if you're not out on the roads driving um your algorithm isn't improving and you know so that's I think that's a huge Advantage for them yeah they have to be on the streets to really perfect it right let's talk about public perception a little bit I mean we know the data is there that these driverless cars are in fact safer than the ride sharing companies like uber but yet people are still really nervous about this they don't trust these driverless cars do you think that's going to change yeah you know it's funny I I was thinking about this quite a bit while coming in here today and I think there's there's the media depiction and there's the reality of public acceptance I think there's what we have here is there's there's a lot of um media that that gets churned up when we have instances and you know whamos had about 22 reportable instances and when we think about 22 instances over 10 million miles it's actually far fewer than than we have from from our public transit agencies from Human drivers throughout our cities and it's interesting that we have such a reaction and I think it's just the novelty I I think when we consider that every day in San Francisco in many cities around the country there are millions of trips and there's literally 1.1 million trips in San Francisco every day 50,000 of them are done by weo a week so okay so it's less than 1% of of our of our travel on our roads right now so I think the bigger question we should be asking from a safety standpoint is public perception is hit and miss based on whether or not you have you've written in the vehicles what your what your perspective on and your interpretation of their driving but the fact is they are performing perhaps better than than you and I and I I I like to ask forgiveness for my driving many times because but I do you know having ridden in the cars having studied them I know that there are many times that I shouldn't behind the be behind the wheel and there are many times I don't want to be behind the wheel and I think that's a when we think about the evolution of this technology the bigger question we might be asking is how do we how can we get a lot of the unsafe driving behavior that is that is happening by humans that don't learn the lessons in difficult situations how do we get that off the roadways and I think some city is going to be really radical and say hey certain portions of our city maybe need to be autonomous only and I don't know that's going to be San Francisco but um you know it very well could be a city like Oslo which is like really wants this technology to come to it basically yesterday yeah you know I want to step back and talk about autonomous vehicles on a whole I mean Mercedes-Benz was the first to come out with this level three autonomous car which essentially means the driver can sit there not touch the gas pedal not look at the road play their video games enjoy the scenery do you think that autonomous personal vehicles are going to be take off faster than these Robo taxis well we should do a little PSA right now on a level three vehicle you should not be playing video games um and and in your Tesla self-driving vehicle I think that you know that you're legally required to be the the pilot in command in that V that vehicle so um do I think level three technology is evolved enough to where uh we can we'll see it kind of dominate the private vehicle Market I think the simple answer is no um the the technology there can only Advance as far as the hardware on the vehicles and the differentiating factor for Cru wh Mo zooks um the leading companies in this area is that the hardware on the vehicle is really sophisticated in being able to anticipate um errors on the road but also being able to judge things that right now we can't do with just cameras and particularly one of those things the liar on many of these vehicles is able to judge speed in in space and velocity of things around it and make path planning decisions in a much more sophisticated way so I think for freeway driving yeah that's a great asset for for for Mercedes um will it translate to vehicle sales I don't know it's also expensive but I think you know we should do everything we can to encourage driver safety I'm so happy to see all the the passenger safety driver safety things coming up in Teslas in BMW in Mercedes across the board that's a that's a that's a win for society will it supplant the sophistication of level four vehicles we see on Streets of San Francisco I don't think so just because of the expense of the hardware needed to do that level four operation yeah interesting see we where we are in five years really fascinating Billy thanks so much for it is really a pleasure thank you well we've seen self-driving cars and on in action on city streets but now there's also a plan to bring them to the stretch of the suburbs in Katra Casta County there's new Transit experiment it's a network of Robo taxis called Glide cars they are autonomous rolling pods that can fit four people in a pot eventually the plan is to run them on a 28m long enclosed roadway stretching from Brentwood through Oakley and Antioch and then ending in Pittsburgh they plan to have 56 pickup points and Riders would summon individual cars using an app and because the cars are only about 5 ft wide the travel route can run alongside Trails railroad tracks and streets without removing any existing Lanes the routes are designed to get people to and from major points of interest like downtown areas commercial centers and other transit systems we'll be right back well thank you so much for joining us for today's conversation on driverless car safety we'd love to hear what you think post your thoughts online using the hash kpix CBS E news is next I'll see you at 5 hey thanks for watching in order to enjoy more videos like this please like and click the link below lower left click it bang It smash it to subscribe

Channel: KPIX | CBS NEWS BAY AREA

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Length: 16min 22sec (982 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 01 2024