In San Francisco, where cyclists already face battles with angry drivers and unpredictable pedestrians, self-driving cars pose a new obstacle. More vehicles have flowed into the city in recent years, turning it into a national laboratory for companies to test and refine their technology.
Bicycle fatalities are on the rise, with the latest federal data showing that more than 1,100 people are expected to die on American roads in 2022. — Self-driving car makers are pitching themselves as part of the solution, but Bay Area cyclists who have experienced the futuristic technology firsthand are wary, according to interviews and a Washington Post analysis of nearly 200 complaints about self-driving cars filed with the California Department of Transportation since 2021.
Many cyclists are hopeful for a world of robot drivers where they won't experience road rage or be distracted by their cellphones. But others resent being used as guinea pigs for driverless vehicles that swerve into bike lanes and suddenly stop, confusing cyclists who try to avoid them. In more than a dozen complaints filed with the DMV, cyclists describe upsetting near-misses and close calls, including a frightening encounter with a Cruise vehicle reported by Martin in August. 2023.
General Motors Co.'s Cruise and Waymo, owned by Google parent Alphabet Inc., are the two major makers of self-driving cars that have launched taxi-like services for paying customers, and several smaller companies, including Amazon.com Inc.'s Zoox, are also running tests in cities such as San Francisco.
Cruise and Waymo are prioritizing bicycle safety, and their vehicles Their safety record is better than that of human-driven cars.
Still, Cruise is banned from operating in California after one of its self-driving cars rolled over, dragging a pedestrian that a human driver had thrown into its path, and Waymo, Cruise and Zoox are under investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for potential defects linked to dozens of crashes, a sign of increased scrutiny as the nascent industry plans to expand nationwide.
Of nearly 200 complaints to the California DMV analyzed by The Washington Post, about 60 percent were about Cruise vehicles, while the rest were primarily about Waymo. About a third were about erratic or reckless driving, and another third documented near-misses with pedestrians. The rest were reports of self-driving cars interfering with traffic or not following road markings or traffic signals.
“Vehicle was driving erratically on residential roads, traveling at least twice the speed limit. I was on my bike and was nearly hit,” said one complaint about an encounter with a Waymo vehicle in March 2022. The author did not provide his name to the DMV.
There were just 17 complaints about obstructing bikes or bike lanes. But interviews with cyclists found that complaints to the DMV only represent a fraction of the negative interactions cyclists have with self-driving cars. And while most of the complaints are about relatively minor incidents, they call into question the companies' boasts that self-driving cars are safer than human drivers, said Christopher White, executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition.
White said that while robot cars could one day make roads safer, “I'm not convinced the technology has fully lived up to its promise yet. … Companies are promoting them as a much safer alternative to humans driving, and if that's their promise, they need to live up to it.”
California is one of the nation's leading testing sites for self-driving cars, but state regulators Tracking issues beyond those reported by citizens is difficult, and many interactions go unreported, forcing authorities to rely primarily on data that companies self-report, which provides little detail.
California regulators last summer allowed Waymo and Cruise to expand in San Francisco, a move seen as a win for the industry and a step closer to wider adoption of the technology. Amid growing scrutiny from federal regulators, Cruise has begun putting its vehicles back on U.S. roads, and Waymo is expanding its driverless taxi service in California and Arizona.
These moves will expose more cyclists to self-driving cars. Martin, the San Francisco cyclist, said he once thought self-driving cars would be more predictable than human drivers, but the crosswalk incident dealt a blow to his “utopian ideas” about what a robot-car-dominated future might look like.
“There's this weird feeling that it's coming towards you and there's nothing you can do,” Martin said. “You can't ring a bell, you can't scream, all you can do is get away as fast as you can.”
Many bike safety advocates support the autonomous vehicle mission and are optimistic that the technology will reduce injuries and fatalities. They are quick to point out the tragedies that come with human-driven vehicles: In San Francisco, there were 2,520 crashes involving at least one cyclist between 2017 and 2022, according to state data analyzed by local law firm Walkup Melodia Kelly & Schonberger.
According to an investigation by the law firm, 10 cyclists were killed in these accidents and a further 243 were seriously injured.
According to the NHTSA, 1,105 bicyclists were killed by drivers nationwide in 2022, the highest number ever.
Zhi Kin Chow, a 73-year-old San Francisco resident who “bicycles everywhere,” is looking forward to a future with reliable self-driving cars, especially when he gets too old to ride. To him, robots are polite and predictable, a welcome contrast to distracted or intoxicated human drivers. But he's seen self-driving cars behave erratically.
In one incident he reported to the DMV last summer, he was bicycling through the Botanical Gardens in Golden Gate Park when a driverless Cruise drove “uncomfortably” past him, nearly grazing his elbow. In a second incident he did not report, Cruise cut in front of him “at full speed” while he was waiting at an intersection.
“I'm an advocate for these things,” he said in an interview. “I don't expect them to be perfect, and they'll never be perfect. I just want them to be better.”
Cruise has recently begun gradually bringing its autonomous vehicles back onto city roads, starting with driving autonomously with human supervision. Driving in Phoenix and Dallas.
Cruise said in a statement that safety around cyclists is core to the company's mission. Spokeswoman Hannah Lindau listed protocols the company has developed with the League of American Bicyclists, including programming Cruise vehicles to veer slightly within their lanes when bicyclists approach and “regularly” updating vehicle technology to recognize infrastructure like bike lanes and bike boxes.
“Safety is a fundamental principle in everything we do and continues to guide our progress towards returning to driverless operations,” Lindow said.
Waymo continues to operate in San Francisco, where last month it made its driverless taxi service available to anyone who downloaded its app. The cars are a fixture in the city, picking up and dropping off passengers like Uber or a taxi.
Ensuring the safety of cyclists and pedestrians is paramount, said Anne Dorsey, a staff software engineer at Waymo who oversees the company's efforts with vulnerable road users. “It's my job to be concerned about anyone who's not inside a big metal box,” Dorsey said. A frequent cyclist, she said: She hasn't owned a car in her entire adult life.
Waymo's technology has been trained on more than 20 million miles with all kinds of road users, from groups of people in dinosaur costumes to people doing worm-like movements at intersections, according to Dorsey. The company's vehicles use multiple cameras, radars and laser scanners to see what's happening in all directions, up to the width of three football fields.
Waymo's cars have a sensor dome on their roofs that can display messages that can be seen from all sides of the vehicle. Currently, the vehicle displays graphics that let other drivers know when it is stopping to pick up or drop off passengers, but Dorsey said the company is looking at other ways to use the sensor dome to communicate with road users.
“As a bicyclist or pedestrian, there's always this anxiety with a human driver: 'Does this person see me?'” Dorsey said, but there's no such worry with Waymo vehicles. Waymo's vehicles are programmed to give cyclists plenty of space and can recognize if a passenger has a child or is driving erratically, Dorsey said. The vehicles also warn passengers to check for bicyclists before opening the door, Dorsey said.
Despite these measures, a Waymo vehicle struck a bicyclist in February, causing non-life-threatening injuries. The company said at the time that the bicyclist was following a truck through a four-way intersection when he was struck by the Waymo. 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 rate of bicycle-related complaints the DMV receives illustrates the uneasy relationship between self-driving cars and cyclists: In April 2023, a Waymo self-driving car drove into a crosswalk, confusing a cyclist and striking him, causing a broken elbow, according to a complaint filed by a cyclist.
Then in August, just days after the state approved the expansion, Cruz's car allegedly made a right turn into the path of a bicyclist, who tried to stop but ended up flipping over the cyclist.
“Apparently he did not respond or acknowledge me!” the complaint states.
Even if self-driving cars prove to be safer than human drivers, they should still be subject to additional scrutiny and aren't the only way to make roads safer, several cyclists said.
Jane Ark is no stranger to the world of bicycles and self-driving cars. She is currently training to be a professional triathlete. In 2018 and 2019, she worked on Uber's self-driving car team, developing software to protect its vehicles from hackers. Ark was initially enthusiastic about the project, but an Uber self-driving car struck and killed Elaine Hertzberg as she was pushing her bike across the street in Tempe, Arizona. Uber subsequently sold its self-driving division.
“We were all put on notice that this was something that could and does kill people, and that was the cost of producing this product,” Ark said.
