Downtown Commission explores ways to improve safety of autonomous vehicles on city streets

Despite the Cruise autonomous vehicle company’s recent decision to pause service in all cities, including Austin, members of the Downtown Commission have concerns about the growing presence of the vehicles and the city’s inability to regulate them. Staff from the Transportation and Public Works Department began a presentation to the commission last week by covering how a 2017 state law limits the abilities of cities to regulate AVs, leaving federal laws and state agencies to do that work.

Cruise’s temporary shutdown removes the largest of the four AV operators from city streets, but commissioners said the likelihood of Cruise returning and other companies expanding will continue to present safety issues.

Rachel Castignoli, who works closely with communicating with the AV companies on behalf of the city, said total hours active on Austin streets, speed traveled during safety incidents and the three-dimensional maps that the companies have of city streets are among the data the city would like to have easier access to. She said currently the city is able to access only some of that information when the companies are willing to share it.

Other city commissions have recently heard and weighed in on ways to solve the issues AVs have with movement around emergency vehicles, recognizing police directing traffic and allowing public safety staff to take over control of a vehicle in emergency situations. Areas that are regular problem points include the Moody Center during events and the city’s fire station on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

“We’ve taken the AV companies to these spots, walked around, talked through the issues and we’ve watched some of the videos recorded from the AVs. We’ve been able to resolve some of the issues, including creating an exclusion zone around emergencies so they don’t wander into areas where there’s a lot of traffic and a lot of pedestrians, especially (University of Texas) football games,” Castignoli said.

Commissioner Jen Weaver said she would like all AVs to be more distinctly marked so residents could easily identify what specific vehicle is involved in a safety incident when calling the city’s 311 line.

“I felt pretty frustrated that I wasn’t able to call in or ID because there wasn’t a phone number on the car and there wasn’t a way to ID the car. … They do have the name kind of coyly placed in a nonstandard identification spot,” she said. “Our call centers are already stressed for emergency calls and for public service calls and … if the AV companies were serious about building relationships with the public, they would be more interested in that communication.”

Commissioner Spencer Schumacher said he’d like the city to be able to analyze how many incidents an average ride-share AV is involved in relative to the general populace of drivers.

“We’ve had 78 people die in Austin this year because of collisions with vehicles. If you told me autonomous vehicles would lower that to 77, I’d hit that button right now,” he said.

Castignoli said another factor causing issues for the city is there’s no standardized way to issue traffic violations of any kind to a driverless car because state law requires the action be taken against its owners, who typically are operating in other states.

In response to a question about what data city staff would like to have, she said ready access to all video from a vehicle involved in a safety incident would be ideal. Other desirable data would be the full-coverage maps for each company’s operations, as well as more complete information about incidents tracked by the operators but not reported to the city.

As an example, Castignoli said collision data that the companies are required to report to the National Transport and Safety Authority showed there were 10 AV crashes in the city in 2023, while the city’s records showed only five.

Photo made available through a Creative Commons license.

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