Paul Harvey, 74, was in his San Francisco neighborhood and took a photograph that has spread throughout the United States.
Suddenly he saw a car pull into a construction site on Golden Gate Avenue, doing nothing to stop.
It was not necessary. The vehicle got stuck in an area where they had just paved with concrete, still very fresh.
The neighbor thought the situation was funny, weird and creepy. A three in one.
Perhaps the driver was monumentally drunk, or had been smoking “joy cigarettes” or, who knows, had fallen asleep due to exhaustion or the effect of some drug.
Well no. The matter was immediately clear. The vehicle, from the Cruise company, was one of those cars that act as a taxi without a driver behind the wheel. There was no driver, it is what is already known as robotaxis.
They had to move several company workers to remove the vehicle, unable to get out of the mess.
San Francisco, the largest experimental territory in the country, has become the first city in the United States with a large commercial fleet of driverless taxis: 500 vehicles.
The business is shared equally by two companies, the aforementioned Cruise, which is a subsidiary of General Motors, and Waymo, owned by Alphabet, Google's parent company.
The two firms received authorization in August from the California Public Utilities Commission, the state regulator, to search for passengers. This pioneering distinction, however, took place despite the opposition of a large part of the neighbours, the police and the fire brigade, as well as the city council itself, due to the concern caused by the application of this novelty.
In theory, driverless vehicles hold promise for a future with less congestion, fewer accidents, since they are mostly due to human error (machines don't get drunk), and superior mobility for people with disabilities.
But after a test stage riddled with errors -someone was injured and a dog died because the car skipped traffic lights and pedestrian crossings-, as soon as the official transport started, that image of the concrete was recorded, the collision of another car with a fire extinguisher truck that was going with the siren going or, among other things, blocking traffic on a main road.
All these incidents, minor although they sound like a warning, were linked to the Cruises, a firm that received an order to park half of its units pending the results of an investigation.
“A lot of progress has been made. Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are technically better and more competent at operating in more challenging environments,” said Professor Nico Larco, who has been following the progress of AVs since the University of Oregon.
"But there is concern about whether they are at the level that they can be safely implemented on a large scale at a time when there is a lot of pressure from autonomous car companies, from their investors, to show a path of profitability," he remarked. .
Larco was surprised that the state agency gave the permit after alerts against police and firefighters. "While we applaud technological advances, we should not be in such a hurry that we forget the human element and the effects that such uncontrolled technology can cause in a dangerous situation," the uniformed officers said in a letter of opposition. In vain.
In that document they specified that one of the robotaxis hindered the passage of emergency vehicles after a shooting in which nine were injured. These cars can run illogically or erratically, despite their intelligence.
Cruise and Waymo maintain that they have taken steps to train emergency services on how to dismantle or interact with their vehicles. "It's not our mission to babysit autonomous vehicles," replied Jeanine Nicholson, San Francisco's fire chief.
In its streets there is a clash between technophobes and futurists, human drivers against computers. Some speak of the setbacks, the danger and the invasion of public roads by automobiles, in addition to ending the labor livelihood of many citizens. Others reply calmly that the driver is not drunk or a physical threat.
“There is frustration because many feel that they are guinea pigs,” Larco stressed. “Security is necessary but it is not enough. There is a series of impacts (energy consumption, congestion, disparity) still unknown”, he commented.
"Bugs are part of any new technology," said Paul Leonardi, a professor of technology management at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He insisted on understanding the stress of the residents of San Francisco, a circumstance that he compared to the irruption of social networks without fully understanding its consequences. "There is a parallel, people should be concerned that companies experiment with it to move forward with innovations," he clarified.
He maintained, however, that this investigation, always under surveillance, must be necessary. “Software developers want to put their tools out in the real world, under as many conditions as possible. In a dynamic situation, such as traffic, a fresh concrete is not distinguishable from a dry one on the road and the best way for the machine to learn is to recognize that variant by itself and program it to apply the brake”, he explained. "The machines need to see different real situations to learn and know what to do," he reiterated.
Although it is already experimented in other American cities, San Francisco stands out as a testing ground. It happens to the despair of its residents, who ask to have a voice and to be heard.
