San Francisco's robotaxi dream has been realized, but some locals and campaigners think things are about to spin out of control

• Robotaxis will be a more common sight on San Francisco's roads, following a recent vote.
• On Thursday, California regulators voted in favor of expanding robotaxi services across the city.

The streets of San Francisco are about to see a whole lot more activity from cars zipping around without anyone at the wheel – despite fears things could go dangerously off course.

As the home of Silicon Valley, the Golden City has become a natural test bed for companies experimenting with cars that can accelerate, switch lanes, and brake at traffic lights without a driver due to a clever mix of autonomous technology and radar sensors.

But with some 42,795 traffic fatalities in the US last year, per the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, it would take a heck of a lot of assurance on the part of robotaxi developers to convince regulators that putting passengers into cars without a driver is a smart idea.

It seems they've managed to do just that.

On Thursday, regulators at the California Public Utilities Commission voted 3-to-1 in favor of greenlighting the expansion of robotaxi services across the entirety of San Francisco. This signaled their confidence in the safety of driverless vehicles for more than 800,000 citizens.

For the likes of Alphabet-owned Waymo and Cruise, the almost decade-old autonomous car company bought by General Motors in 2016, it's vindication in a long journey to bring EV-based, driverless transport options to the public.

The companies have been trialing robotaxi services in the city under various restrictions in a bid to boost regulator confidence; in Waymo's case, it has meant offering rides to passengers without charge, while Cruise has been limited to operate in less than half the city.

Free rein to launch paid-for robotaxi services in the city now at any time of day is clearly a big win for those betting that driverless cars represent the future of travel in cities marred by constant accidents, hours of traffic, and perpetual smog.

In response to the decision, Prashanthi Raman, a vice president at Cruise, posted on LinkedIn that "every single person in San Francisco has access to cleaner, more sustainable and independent transportation options" and can "safely connect to the places they want to go" now.

For others, however, the decision by California regulators to give the go-ahead heralds a new era of driverless death machines that could spin out of control.

Fears over robotaxis are real

Several city officials and locals have spent the run-up to the decision protesting the possibility of robotaxis racing across San Francisco over fears that the cars aren't ready for the streets.

Reuters reported that "hundreds of residents and members of various interest groups" expressed concerns about everything from safety to accessibility after entering the hearing room where the decision was being weighed.

It included testimony from the local transport agency, which said it had "logged close to 600 incidents involving autonomous vehicles" since spring last year. It is this that will linger in the minds of San Francisco's residents as robotaxis go mainstream in the city.

Waymo notes that its cars have had "over 20 million miles of real-world driving experience through countless situations" and follow "a rigorous safety framework."

That may well be true, but crashes involving driverless cars have happened; 400 took place in 10 months, with a few fatalities as a result, data from the NHTSA showed in 2022.

This does, of course, pale in comparison with the number of accidents that take place daily in regular vehicles, but it highlights challenges for driverless vehicles nonetheless.

Edge cases are a particular challenge; these are improbable incidents that a driverless car hasn't encountered in its training, but ends up confronting in a real-world situation that it doesn't know quite how to handle.

In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Safe Street Rebel, which describes itself as "a decentralized group of activists," reacted to the decision by saying "robot car companies win a ruling with a capture regulator. But as we know, more cars just means more problems."

Before Thursday's vote, the group suggested that as a counter, people protesting robotaxis should take traffic cones and place them on the cars' hoods – a move that stops the car and puts them into shutdown mode.

It's up to the locals now to decide if they're worth the risk.