Driverless cars in Sacramento? Why there is nothing the city could do about it | Opinion

Cars with nobody behind the wheel can start ferrying passengers throughout Sacramento or any other California city whenever their makers at Google and General Motors decide to expand the business. And there is nothing any city can do about it.

In no small irony, the regulation of the robot taxi came about thanks to humans who are as immune to the will of local governments as any machine. They are the five members of the California Public Utilities Commission, who are all appointed by the governor.

The CPUC made robot history last month when it approved on a 3-1 vote two 24-hour driverless passenger services in the city of San Francisco. There were strong objections from the city’s transportation agencies. There was also passionate support from business leaders such as the Bay Area Council and activist groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

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Receiving the PUC operating permits were Waymo, an affiliate of Google, and Cruise, affiliated with General Motors.

“I do believe in the potential of this technology to increase safety on the roadway,” said John Reynolds, a CPUC commissioner who was previously lead counsel for Cruise (his required year of recusal on the issue has since expired). “Additionally, this technology has the ability to help California meet its clean energy and transportation goals.”

With the CPUC allowing driverless passenger service around the clock in San Francisco, it creates a path for the companies to follow wherever they may seek to expand service.

This is an example of too much or too little democracy, depending on one’s view of Autonomous Vehicle Passenger Service. This term is a regulatory mouthful. But in this case, words have real regulatory meaning, and there is a world of difference in how California has ended up managing car trips under different business models.

If, as an example, you arrive at the Sacramento Valley train station and you wave your hand at a car with a human driver, and a meter to calculate the charge along the way, you will have boarded one of the most locally-regulated businesses in California. You are in a taxi.

If, on the other hand, you hailed a human driving a car by using a ride-sharing app on your cell phone, you are boarding a vehicle affiliated with a Transportation Network Company.

San Francisco was also the birthplace of these companies and ridesourcing, under now-familiar names such as Uber and Lyft. And to prevent city politics from thwarting this emerging technology, the CPUC made a decisive, history-changing move. In a 2013 decision, as a regulator of transportation carriers in California, it invented the category of the transportation network company and declared it under its sole jurisdiction.

At roughly the same time, a California state senator was envisioning that, someday, an autonomous vehicle may be invented that was safe and sophisticated enough to navigate safely on city streets. His name was Alex Padilla. He ran Senate Bill 1298 to identify the agency with the historic responsibility to review the emergency technology and approve when such a vehicle could drive, driverless, in California.

Which agency did the Legislature pick? Perhaps the least popular and trusted one of them all.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles.

With DMV bureaucrats as our scientific experts, and a commission unaccountable to voters or communities in charge of deployment, what possibly could go wrong?

Genevieve Shiroma, formerly a board member of the Sacramento Municipal Utility District and now a CPUC commissioner, was the lone dissenting vote against placing autonomous cars into 24-hour operations in San Francisco.

“The Commission lacks at present sufficient information to evaluate in a comprehensive fashion the safety aspects of this mode of transportation, especially insofar as driverless autonomous vehicles impact the ability of our first responders to carry out their life-saving duties,” Shiroma said. “All it takes is one real-life example of a driverless autonomous vehicle that prevents a first responder from doing its job in real-time. Now imagine if one of those so-called anecdotes involved a member of your family in need of urgent medical attention, or is trapped in a burning building. I would not characterize such an event as an anecdote.”

It did not take long for Shiroma’s concern to play out on a San Francisco street. Last week, a pedestrian died after being hit by a vehicle. A driverless car reportedly impeded the responding ambulance.

When these driverless cars actually arrive into the Sacramento marketplace is anyone’s guess. It is clear we are not amongst the first guinea pigs. It all feels more of a question of when, not if.

Too many local governments screwed up the regulation of taxis by limiting supply, enriching those with cabs while paying scant attention to the quality of the service. This accelerated the birth of the rideshare companies.

It is hard to imagine how the CPUC, based in San Francisco, can possibly monitor and make timely adjustments to driverless ride services throughout California, particularly in the industry’s infancy. The state is squarely in charge.

In DMV we trust.