{"id":415944,"date":"2026-07-29T01:18:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T01:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/415944\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T01:18:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T01:18:10","slug":"federal-lawmaker-steps-in-after-s-f-waymo-fiascos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/415944\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal lawmaker steps in after S.F. Waymo fiascos"},"content":{"rendered":"

Federal lawmakers are stepping in to regulate robotaxis after a string of San Francisco traffic fiascos in which Waymos have stalled, lost battery and required physical tows \u2013 most infamously during the widely-documented Fourth of July car-pocalypse.<\/a><\/p>\n

Mayor Daniel Lurie joined Congressman Kevin Mullin on the steps of Fire Station 4 in Mission Bay on Tuesday,\u00a0 as he proposed\u00a0new federal standards that would \u2013 on paper \u2013 keep robotaxis like Waymo from blocking emergency first responders<\/a>, driving through active crime scenes<\/a>, or\u00a0 backing up<\/a> intersections.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lurie welcomed Waymo<\/a> onto car-free Market Street in 2025, and San Francisco International Airport gave approval for the company to take passengers to and from the airport. Yet despite his high profile, and previous support for what he called \u201csafe, reliable, and modern transportation options<\/a>,\u201d the mayor has little authority to regulate the standards for autonomous vehicles operating statewide. That power rests with the California Public Utilities Commission and Department of Motor Vehicles, who have not publicly responded to Lurie\u2019s calls for tighter regulation nor Mullin\u2019s legislation after being contacted by Mission Local.<\/p>\n

But with today\u2019s announcement, it\u2019s clear that federal lawmakers aren\u2019t waiting for those agencies to act.<\/p>\n

If approved, Mullin\u2019s AV Emergency Response Coordination Act would establish \u201cuniform safety standards\u201d nationally, requiring robotaxis to share the road with police officers, firefighters and paramedics. Mullin and other officials cited a list of traffic incidents in cities such as Austin<\/a>, where a Waymo vehicle blocked authorities trying to respond to a mass shooting.<\/p>\n

The bill, according to Mullin, would establish a 24\/7 hotline for public officials to communicate directly with autonomous vehicle companies. It would also, he said, create a process for local public officials to issue requests for robotaxis to avoid certain areas during emergencies using geofencing. The bill would apply to all autonomous vehicle companies.<\/p>\n

\u201cWaymo wants to fix these problems, and I would welcome their support of this bill,\u201d said Mullin at the news conference. \u201cThey don\u2019t want the negative headlines. They don\u2019t want the reality of the incidents we\u2019re seeing in the city.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tiffany Moore, Head of Federal Policy and Government Affairs at Waymo, said the company generally supports efforts to standardize how autonomous vehicles adapt to first responders. In a statement provided to Mission Local, she did not say whether the company specifically supports Mullin\u2019s bill.<\/p>\n

\u201cEstablishing minimum guidelines would provide the entire industry and public safety community with a consistent framework, ensuring emergency responders have the resources and certainty they need whenever they encounter an autonomous vehicle on the road,\u201d Moore said.<\/p>\n

For better or worse, San Francisco has been a testing lab for the robotaxi revolution, for longer than any other city.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have learned more than any other city about how they operate in a dense, complex, urban environment,\u201d said Lurie. \u201cWe have seen their enormous potential \u2013 we have also learned where stronger coordination and clearer standards are needed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waymo notably soured the fanfare of SF\u2019s semiquincentennial July 4th celebration at the Golden Gate Bridge, which city officials had banked on as symbolizing a comeback from the \u201cdoomloop\u201d narratives dogging the city\u2019s image.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Instead there was gridlock. Waymos contributed to the fiasco\u00a0 by running out of battery and requiring tow trucks<\/a> that were, in turn, blocked by stalled robotaxis.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After the fiasco, Lurie sent a frustrated letter<\/a>\u00a0 to state regulators demanding tougher standards for autonomous vehicles.<\/p>\n

\u201cCalifornia\u2019s challenge now is not just whether autonomous vehicles can operate safely under normal conditions, but also whether they can perform reliably during extraordinary ones,\u201dLurie wrote in the July 16 letter.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

He\u00a0 also cited problems last December, when Waymo was forced to halt service after a near-citywide power outage created a PR nightmare for the company. Traffic lights across the city were down, confusing the driverless cars and trapping\u00a0 long lines of drivers behind them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also put Waymo and other companies on formal notice, calling nationwide incidents \u201cunacceptable.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that\u2019s an administration that\u2019s taken a pretty hands off approach to regulation \u2013 they even are acknowledging that this is a real problem,\u201d Mullin said. \u201cAll of these crises are calling for federal action.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Federal lawmakers are stepping in to regulate robotaxis after a string of San Francisco traffic fiascos in which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415945,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[6919,101,103,102,104,106,105,5987],"class_list":["post-415944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-autonomous-vehicles","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-waymo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}