The number of cyclists killed by cars on the roads is increasing. Can autonomous cars stop the bloodshed?
In San Francisco, cyclists struggle with inattentive drivers and unpredictable pedestrians, but self-driving cars present a new obstacle. In recent years, more and more of these vehicles have flocked to the city as it serves as a national laboratory for companies to test and develop technology. As the number of bicycling deaths in the United States continues to rise — the latest federal figures show more than 1,100 fatalities on American roads in 2022 — autonomous car companies are offering themselves as part of the solution. But California cyclists, who have first-hand experience with the futuristic technology, are wary, according to an analysis of nearly 200 autonomous vehicle-related complaints filed with the California Department of Motor Vehicles since 2021.
Many cyclists hope for the arrival of autonomous vehicles because they will never be angry or distracted by their phones. But some complain that they are guinea pigs for companies testing driverless vehicles, battling cars that veer into bike lanes or stop suddenly, confusing cyclists who try to drive past them. In more than a dozen complaints submitted to the state traffic authority, the DMV (California Department of Motor Vehicles), cyclists report near-accident situations.
One of the complainers is cyclist Reed Martin, who was happy to share the road with autonomous vehicles on crowded city streets until one drove toward him last summer when he and his 5-year-old daughter crossed a zebra crossing. “We jumped out of the way and it just kept going as if we weren’t even there,” Martin, 42, wrote in his August 2023 complaint filed with the California Department of Motor Vehicles. It was “scary for our family, we felt like he didn’t see us at all and we couldn’t do anything.”
Cruise, owned by General Motors, and Waymo, owned by Google parent Alphabet, are the two biggest self-driving car companies that have already launched taxi-like services for paying customers. Several smaller players, including Amazon-owned Zoox, are also testing in San Francisco and other cities. Cruise and Waymo say they prioritize the safety of cyclists and that their vehicles have better safety records than human-driven cars. However, Cruise is no longer allowed to operate in California after one of its cars ran over a pedestrian who was pushed into its path by a human driver. Waymo, Cruise and Zoox are being investigated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for possible errors related to dozens of accidents.
About 60 percent of the nearly 200 California vehicle inspection complaints filed concern Cruise vehicles, the rest mostly Waymo. About a third report erratic or reckless driving, while another third document near-misses with pedestrians. The remainder includes reports of autonomous cars impeding traffic or ignoring road markings or traffic signs. “The car was driving erratically and at least twice the speed limit on a residential street. I almost got hit while I was riding my bike,” said one complaint about a March 2022 interaction with a Waymo vehicle. The author did not give his name to the DMV.
Only 17 complaints involved cyclists or crossing the bike lane, but this is actually only a fraction of the negative interactions cyclists have with self-driving vehicles. And while most of the complaints describe relatively minor incidents, they raise questions about the companies’ boast that the cars are safer than human drivers, said Christopher White, executive director of the San Francisco Bike Coalition. White says robotic cars could one day make the roads safer, “but we’re yet to see the technology fully deliver on the promises. Companies are talking about it as a much safer alternative to human driving. If that’s the promise, then they have to deliver.” “.
Although California is a testing ground for autonomous vehicles, state regulators have little ability to track problems beyond citizen reports — and there’s not much they can do. Officials must rely largely on self-reported data by companies, which lacks detail. California regulators approved Waymo and Cruise last summer to expand in San Francisco, a win for the industry and a step toward wider adoption of the technology, and Waymo recently expanded its driverless taxi service to California and Arizona. These moves will expose even more cyclists to autonomous cars. Martin, a San Francisco cyclist, says he once thought vehicles were more predictable than human drivers. But the incident on the zebra wiped out his “utopian vision” of what a future dominated by robot cars might look like. “There’s this weird feeling of not being able to do anything about what’s coming right at you,” Martin said. “No matter how much you yell at him, all you can do is quickly get out of his way.”
Many cyclist safety advocates support the mission of autonomous vehicles and are confident that the technology will reduce injuries and deaths. It’s easy to point to the carnage involving human-driven cars: San Francisco had 2,520 crashes involving at least one cyclist between 2017 and 2022, according to state data analyzed by a local law firm. In these collisions, 10 cyclists were killed and another 243 cyclists were seriously injured, the law firm stated. Nationally, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 1,105 bicyclists were killed by drivers in 2022, the highest number on record.
Cruise recently began the return of autonomous cars to city streets, first launching the human-supervised autonomous method in Phoenix and Dallas. In a statement, Cruise says that safety around cyclists is central to its mission. Spokeswoman Hannah Lindow listed the protocols the company has developed in conjunction with the American Bicycling League. These include programming Cruise vehicles to move slightly further in their lane when a cyclist is approaching, and “regularly” updating the vehicles’ technology to recognize related infrastructure, such as bike lanes and cycle signals. “Safety is the guiding principle behind everything we do, and it continues to drive our progress toward restarting driverless transportation,” said Lindow.
Waymo still operates in San Francisco, and last month made its driverless taxi service available to anyone who downloads its app. Cars are an integral part of the city, picking up and dropping off passengers like Uber or taxis. “The safety of bicyclists and pedestrians is paramount,” said Anne Dorsey, a Waymo software engineer who oversees the company’s approach to vulnerable road users. “Anybody that’s not in a big metal box, that’s my job to worry about,” Dorsey said. He often rides a bike and hasn’t owned a car his whole life.
Waymo’s technology has been trained on more than 20 million miles of driving with all kinds of drivers, from a group of people in dinosaur costumes to people crawling through an intersection like maggots, Dorsey said. The cars use multiple cameras, radar and laser scanners to see what’s going on in all directions, up to three football fields away, he said. Waymo’s cars have a sensor dome on the roof that can display a message visible from all directions. For example, it shows a graph to let other drivers know when a car stops to pick up or drop off a passenger, but the company is considering using it in other ways to communicate with human riders, Dorsey said.
“As a bicyclist or a pedestrian, my fear with human drivers is always, ‘Can this person see me?'” Dorsey said he doesn’t worry about that around Waymo’s vehicles. The cars are programmed to give cyclists enough space and recognize if a bicyclist is a minor, Dorsey said. Cars warn bicyclists before opening the door, he said. In February, a Waymo car struck a bicyclist while closely following a truck They were hit by Waymo, the company said at the time.Dorsey declined to comment on the incident, which is still under investigation by San Francisco police, but said the company is learning from it.
Meanwhile, the fraction of complaints received by the DMV about bicyclists clearly shows the shaky relationship between self-driving cars and bicyclists. According to a complaint filed by a bicyclist, in April 2023, a Waymo drove into a zebra crossing, confusing a bicyclist who crashed and broke his elbow. Then in August — days after the state approved an expansion of those vehicles — a Cruise car cut into a bicyclist while making a right turn. The cyclist tried to stop, but then his bike overturned. “He clearly didn’t react or see me!” – the complaint states.
Even if self-driving cars are proven to be safer than human drivers, they should receive extra scrutiny, and it’s not the only way to make roads safer, several cyclists said. “We all have to wake up, this is something that can and will kill people – that’s the price of building the product,” Reed says.
Source: sg.hu
