Waymo autonomous cars are ubiquitous on San Francisco’s streets. To properly regulate the industry, Waymo and other companies need to divulge key data about their vehicles and ridership.

It seems like Waymos are everywhere in San Francisco these days — and it feels like there are more of them. You see them in the denser parts of the city, like downtown and the Mission, of course, but also cruising in quiet residential neighborhoods. You might see a procession of four or six of them on fast, busy thoroughfares like Geary but also on the steep, windy streets of my Glen Park neighborhood.

But just how many Waymos are on San Francisco’s streets at any given moment?

It’s a critical question. And we don’t know the answer to it. The company refuses to disclose that information, and there are no regulations to compel it to do so.

Article continues below this ad

That needs to change, particularly as the company and others like it dramatically scale up. Waymo’s performance during the blackouts in December in San Francisco eroded public trust in its technology. Offering greater data transparency would help restore it — and start needed discussions about other regulations for Waymo and the rest of the burgeoning autonomous taxi industry.

A fundamental challenge is the way autonomous vehicle companies have thus far defined safety. For them, safety is defined as not running into other things. Waymo vehicles seem to perform better than human drivers in this regard, based on data the company provides, reducing injury-causing crashes by 81% and serious-injury crashes by 90%.

See more S.F. Chronicle on Google

That certainly is one important aspect of safety. 

However, the autonomous vehicle industry and its regulators neglect other key aspects. Waymos get confused when things are complex — and things in cities are complex.

Article continues below this ad

At a San Francisco Board of Supervisors Land Use and Transportation Committee hearing on Monday, Waymo admitted that its robotaxis stalled nearly 1,600 times during the December blackouts.

There are infinitesimal scenarios that driverless vehicles might not anticipate; a power outage seems like one that it most definitely should. Yet when traffic signals go out — as was the case during the December blackouts — the car brakes and then calls a human operator for help. (What training do these operators receive? We don’t know.) During the power outage, Waymo said there were too many requests for assistance, causing the vehicles to stop.

The company’s response time may often be quick, but even then, the car could have momentarily gridlocked an entire intersection, creating cascading effects across the transportation network. If this happens multiple times per day, it reduces the capacity of the transportation network to move people and goods, which puts the urban economy at risk. 

Roughly 75% of Waymo rides are with single or no passengers, and about 44% of miles driven are with empty cars, when vehicles are repositioning or traveling to pick up passengers. Waymos have also started using parking spaces, making parking that much more challenging for drivers.

The more robotaxis on the road, the more these challenges will compound.

Back in 2012, Lyft and Uber claimed their ride-hailing cars would transform urban efficiency: They’d liberate us all from car ownership, reduce traffic, encourage ridesharing and accommodate people with disabilities. None of those things happened. And so far, autonomous vehicle companies have not explained how they would succeed where those companies failed. Nor have they provided sufficient data to assist lawmakers in regulating better outcomes.

For the privilege of testing vehicles on our streets, autonomous vehicle companies should operate with guard rails, not impunity. Greater transparency would help, as would measurable safety and performance goals.

Currently, there are no caps on the number of autonomous vehicles. Ultimately, regulations should stipulate how many vehicles can be on the road based on time of day, location and weather — not solely on passenger demand. Before regulators land on a number, however, they need to understand vehicle flow. Without data, they can’t. Waymo should disclose what percentage of rides involve remote assistance — is it 1% or 50%? The difference matters for understanding what “autonomous” actually means.

There should, of course, be federal data reporting standards. Regulating vehicle numbers has been a critical regulatory failure of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which has been criticized for not keeping pace with technology and safety needs. That isn’t likely to change under the Trump administration.

The Open Mobility Foundation, a nonprofit that has developed a digital tool to help cities effectively manage transportation in the public right of way, is a logical place to help establish local standards.

All autonomous vehicles should be subject to third-party safety audits, something Waymo began last fall (and should have been doing much sooner).

Autonomous taxis are to transportation what the concierge doctor is to the health care system: a convenient and expensive option affordable for the few. Over the past 15 years, at least $100 billion has been invested in autonomous vehicle development, while Bay Area transit agencies are facing a potentially system-destroying deficit of $800 million a year starting in 2027. Waymo claims to be delivering 400,000 rides per week in all its markets — which include Phoenix, Los Angeles and others — but doesn’t divulge how many are in San Francisco. Meanwhile, Bay Area passengers took more than 4.5 million BART trips in January alone. 

The job of transportation is to move people and goods. Unregulated, driverless vehicles become an obstacle to that. A car with a single passenger will never be the most efficient way to move people. The Bay Area already faces unprecedented congestion: Without data transparency and appropriate regulations of autonomous vehicles, traffic will only get worse.

I first began writing about autonomous vehicles in 2013. At that time, many experts said their deployment within five years was imminent. Then, as now, projections should be taken with a grain of salt.

Guest opinions in Open Forum and Insight are produced by writers with expertise, personal experience or original insights on a subject of interest to our readers. Their views do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Chronicle editorial board, which is committed to providing a diversity of ideas to our readership.

Read more about our transparency and ethics policies

What we do know is that autonomous vehicles are here, and their presence will grow. The safety and efficiency of these vehicles and the public’s trust in them are contingent on a more transparent and collaborative approach.

If these companies won’t even share how many of their vehicles are on the road, imagine what else they aren’t telling us?

Allison Arieff is a columnist and editorial writer for the Opinion section.

© San Francisco Chronicle