Members of the city’s Public Safety Committee say they have some concerns about the launch of autonomous rideshare vehicles in Dallas.
Questions over what happens if one of the autonomous cars gets pulled over by the police or where a vehicle might go in the case of a street closure, were raised during the committee’s Tuesday meeting.
And state law says Dallas city officials can’t actually regulate the “operation of a automated motor vehicle or automated driving system.”
The rideshare company is called Cruise — and they say they’ve already started giving people rides in San Francisco, Phoenix and Austin.
Yariel Diaz is a regional manager in charge of government affairs for Cruise and says the company hopes to launch vehicles in Dallas by the end of the year.
“The general public cannot access our vehicles right now,” Diaz said during Tuesday’s meeting. “We are…still testing with our employees internally.”
Diaz says Cruise is an option for people who “want to get to where they are going in vehicles that don’t get tired, don’t get distracted and don’t drive drunk.”
The company calls their fleet of cars “level 4 autonomous vehicles.” That means the car is doing all driving tasks and “passengers cannot take over the driving task” — and it’s limited to certain geography, time of day and weather conditions, according to the company’s briefing.
Cruise hopes to launch the service using the Chevrolet Bolt. Diaz says the cars are retrofitted with radar, light and acoustic sensors and are driven by a computer.
Diaz also says the cars can’t be remotely driven either — a safety feature he says was put in place so no one takes control of the cars.
Except for Cruise personnel.
“We begin conversations with cities, so they know who we are, what we’re doing…as well as how we engage with first responders,” Diaz said.
Diaz says if the car is being pulled over, it will slow down — pull as close as possible to the side of the road and lower the window. After, the officer can speak with a remote Cruise assistant. The company has hired two staffers to do training with Dallas first responders, before the service is launched.
Cruise also added an option to drive the cars manually in certain situations.
“The officer would approach the vehicle…show their badge…and then they would be walked through the process of how to switch it over into manual mode,” Diaz said.
District 2 Council Member Jesse Moreno says he is excited for the launch of the autonomous vehicles, but still has concerns around special events and street closures.
“Can you walk us through special events and street closures,” Moreno asked. “What did you learn from Austin that won't happen here in Dallas?”
Diaz stressed the importance of having a strong relationship with city officials, so Cruise can coordinate some of those aspects of the one-off events. He says one of the ways the company does this is with “avoidance areas.”
“We would rather avoid servicing these areas and make sure the vehicles are not getting stuck or not in the way,” Diaz said. “Rather than throw our vehicles into these areas and have them be a concern for the community.”
He also says if they can’t figure out a certain situation, the vehicles will automatically call “remote assistance” which then reviews data from the cars sensors and advises its next steps.
District 12 Council Member Cara Mendelsohn says the company has used significant city staff time for certain trainings and wanted to know if Cruise was paying them for that time.
“The idea behind the trainings is that staff is aware before we’re live…to provide as much engagement and an opportunity for questions,” Diaz said. “As you can image, this is new technology and most folks have questions about how it works.”
Mendelsohn says there needs to be some “cost recovery system.”
“We are expending a lot of tax dollars for your, again, for-profit business,” Mendelson said.
Diaz did not have firm numbers about how many times a Cruise vehicle has been “pulled over” by the police. But he did say that there have been around 168,000 “interactions” with police and fire — not specifically vehicles being “pulled over.”
Cruise executives hope the service will be available for Dallas residents by the end of the year.
Got a tip? Email Nathan Collins at ncollins@kera.org. You can follow Nathan on Twitter @nathannotforyou.
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