Self driving AI powered taxis keep interfering with fire scenes in California

Self driving, AI powered taxis are already on the road in San Francisco, but the vehicles are not programmed to take emergency response vehicles into consideration. Robotaxis keep interfering with firefighters on the streets of San Francisco, and the fire chief is fed up. 

“They’re not ready for prime time,” Chief Jeanine Nicholson says to the LA Times, as reported by FireFighterNation.com.

Driverless taxis from companies like Waymo and Cruise are picking up passengers and dropping them off in designated sections of the city. These companies now rapidly want to rapidly expand their services throughout the entire city.

The cars can be deployed in unlimited numbers, allegedly operate in any kind of weather, and work day or night. According to LA Times,  California state regulators appear ready to approve their request.

However, city leaders in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Santa Monica are concerned that the robotaxi industry is being allowed to move too fast, and if too many of them are on the streets at the wrong time, they may interfere with emergency response scenes. 

Officials say that putting more robotaxis on public streets, despite  them proving  "inept at dealing with firetrucks, ambulances and police cars". And, they say, California state agencies have set up the rules so cities have little say in autonomous vehicle regulation. 

Here are some of the occasions the fire department have reported incidents with robotaxis:

— Running through yellow emergency tape and ignoring warning signs to enter a street with storm-damaged electrical wires, then driving past emergency vehicles with some of those wires snarled around rooftop lidar sensors.

— Blocking firehouse driveways, requiring another firehouse to dispatch an ambulance to a medical emergency.

— Sitting still on a one-way street and forcing a firetruck to back up and take another route to a burning building.

— Pulling up behind a fire truck that was flashing its emergency lights and parking there, interfering with firefighters unloading ladders.

— Entering an active fire scene, then parking with one of its tires on top of a fire hose.

- After a mass shooting June 9 that wounded nine people, a robotaxi blocked a lane in front of emergency responders in the city’s Mission District. Another lane was open, but in a news release, the Fire Department said on a narrower street, the blockage could have been “catastrophic.”

Read more on FirefighterNation.ca

Photo Credit: (Cover photo above)

 A Waymo self-driving car on the road in Mountain View. Wikipedia Commons License. Author: Grendelkhan.