Emergency First Responders Say Waymos Are Getting Worse
Emergency First Responders Say Waymos Are Getting Worse
紧急救援人员称 Waymo 自动驾驶汽车表现日益恶化
Emergency first-responder leaders told federal regulators in a private meeting last month that they were frustrated with the performance of autonomous vehicles on their streets—that city firefighters, police officers, EMTs, and paramedics are forced to spend time during emergencies resolving issues with frozen or stuck cars. One fire official called them “a safety issue for our crews as well as the victims.” WIRED obtained an audio recording of the meeting.
上个月，紧急救援部门的负责人向联邦监管机构透露，他们对自动驾驶汽车在城市道路上的表现感到沮丧。在紧急情况下，消防员、警察、急救人员和医护人员被迫花费时间去处理那些“冻结”或卡住的车辆。一位消防官员称这些车辆“对我们的救援人员和受害者来说都是一个安全隐患”。《连线》（WIRED）杂志获得了此次会议的录音。
Officials from San Francisco and Austin, where Waymo has been ferrying passengers without drivers for more than a year, said the vehicles’ performance is getting worse. “We are actually seeing something interesting: backsliding of some things that had improved upon,” Mary Ellen Carroll, the executive director of San Francisco’s Department of Emergency Management, told officials with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which oversees self-driving vehicle safety in the US. “They are committing more traffic violations.”
在旧金山和奥斯汀，Waymo 提供无人驾驶载客服务已超过一年。来自这两个城市的官员表示，这些车辆的表现正在变差。旧金山紧急事务管理局执行主任玛丽·艾伦·卡罗尔（Mary Ellen Carroll）对美国国家公路交通安全管理局（NHTSA，负责监管美国自动驾驶汽车安全）的官员表示：“我们实际上观察到一个有趣的现象：一些曾经有所改善的问题出现了倒退。它们正在引发更多的交通违规行为。”
“We’ve seen some behavior we haven’t seen in a few years … Waymo is frequently now blocking our fire stations from access,” added Chief Patrick Rabbitt, the head of the San Francisco Fire Department. “Their default is to freeze.” The situation can prevent firetrucks from responding to emergencies in a “timely and appropriate” way, he said.
“我们看到了一些几年前才有的行为……Waymo 现在经常堵住我们消防站的出口，”旧金山消防局局长帕特里克·拉比特（Patrick Rabbitt）补充道，“它们的默认反应就是‘冻结’（原地不动）。”他表示，这种情况可能会阻碍消防车“及时且适当地”响应紧急情况。
In Austin, first responders have been frequently stymied by Waymos “freezing up,” said Lieutenant William White, head of Highway Enforcement Command at the Austin Police Department. White said that, contrary to what Waymo had told first responders, the vehicles often fail to recognize or respond to officers’ hand signals, which can lead to cascading delays during emergencies or unusual road incidents.
在奥斯汀，奥斯汀警察局公路执法指挥部负责人、中尉威廉·怀特（William White）表示，急救人员经常被“冻结”的 Waymo 车辆所困。怀特指出，与 Waymo 此前向急救人员承诺的情况相反，这些车辆往往无法识别或响应警察的手势，这可能导致紧急情况或突发道路事件中出现连锁性的延误。
“I believe the technology was deployed too quickly in too vast amounts, with hundreds of vehicles, when it wasn’t really ready,” White said. NHTSA did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
“我认为这项技术在尚未真正成熟时，就以数百辆车的规模被过快地投入使用，”怀特说道。NHTSA 未回应《连线》杂志的置评请求。
The complaints come as Waymo embarks on an ambitious expansion across the US and the world. Today, the company offers driverless rides in parts of 10 US cities, with plans to launch service in 10 more before the end of the year, including London. Waymo said last month that it’s now providing 500,000 paid rides weekly—a figure that’s still dwarfed by human-powered ride-hail services (Uber provides some 400 times that number weekly) but has grown tenfold since last year.
这些投诉出现之际，Waymo 正致力于在美国乃至全球范围内进行雄心勃勃的扩张。目前，该公司在全美 10 个城市的部分地区提供无人驾驶乘车服务，并计划在今年年底前再进入 10 个城市，其中包括伦敦。Waymo 上个月表示，目前每周提供 50 万次付费乘车服务——这一数字虽然仍远不及人类驾驶的网约车服务（Uber 每周的订单量约为该数字的 400 倍），但已比去年增长了十倍。
But these comments from cities where the service is already operating threaten to slow the rollout of driverless technology, which, according to Waymo’s data, reduces serious crashes compared to human-driven cars. Waymo is already facing political opposition, especially from organized labor, in several dense, blue, and potentially lucrative cities, including Boston, New York City, Seattle, and Washington, DC.
然而，来自这些已运营城市的声音可能会减缓无人驾驶技术的推广速度。根据 Waymo 的数据，与人类驾驶的汽车相比，该技术减少了严重事故的发生。Waymo 目前已在波士顿、纽约、西雅图和华盛顿特区等人口稠密、政治倾向偏蓝且具有潜在盈利能力的城市面临政治阻力，尤其是来自工会的反对。
In a statement, Waymo spokesperson Julia Ilina wrote: “We deeply value our partnership with first responders and our shared commitment to safety. Their ongoing feedback has been instrumental in driving impactful improvements to the Waymo service.” The company says it has conducted in-person training for more than 35,000 emergency responders across the country.
Waymo 发言人朱莉娅·伊琳娜（Julia Ilina）在一份声明中写道：“我们非常重视与急救人员的合作关系以及我们共同的安全承诺。他们持续的反馈对于推动 Waymo 服务的有效改进至关重要。”该公司表示，已在全国范围内为超过 3.5 万名紧急救援人员进行了面对面培训。
Public Comment Periods
公众评论期
The comments made in the private meeting are blunter than what government officials have generally said in public. But they reflect long-simmering and sometimes vocal frustrations expressed by city leaders since at least late last year. Since autonomous vehicle operations are regulated in California and Texas by state rather than city officials, local first-responder departments and those who represent them can generally only request that developers like Waymo make specific changes to their operations.
在私下会议中发表的言论比政府官员在公开场合的表态更为直率。但这些言论反映了自去年年底以来，城市领导人长期积压且有时公开表达的挫败感。由于加利福尼亚州和得克萨斯州的自动驾驶汽车运营是由州政府而非市政府官员监管的，当地急救部门及其代表通常只能要求像 Waymo 这样的开发商对其运营方式做出具体调整。
On Wednesday, Austin first responders appeared before the City Council to discuss Waymo’s response to an incident last month in which a driverless vehicle blocked an ambulance for two minutes that was responding to a shooting in the city’s downtown, which killed three people and injured at least 14. Though officers were able to connect quickly with Waymo operators to move the vehicle, they reported that it had taken up to three minutes to connect with a remote agent in the past. They reiterated that Waymos don’t always respond well to hand signals, especially ones from police mounted on motorcycles.
周三，奥斯汀的急救人员出席了市议会，讨论 Waymo 对上个月一起事件的应对情况。当时，一辆无人驾驶汽车阻挡了一辆救护车长达两分钟，而该救护车正赶往市中心处理一起造成 3 人死亡、至少 14 人受伤的枪击事件。尽管警察能够迅速联系 Waymo 操作员移走车辆，但他们报告称，过去曾出现过联系远程代理人需要长达三分钟的情况。他们重申，Waymo 车辆并不总是能很好地响应手势，尤其是来自骑摩托车的警察的手势。
Waymo declined to attend the meeting, and two front-row chairs labeled “RESERVED FOR: WAYMO” remained empty throughout the two-hour session.
Waymo 拒绝出席此次会议，两把贴有“WAYMO 预留席”标签的前排座椅在整个两小时的会议期间一直空着。
Ilina, the Waymo spokesperson, said the company has “already had the substantive conversations this moment calls for,” and said the company has answered questions from city officials. “We will keep working with Austin’s leadership and first-responder community, because ongoing collaboration is how we build the trust this city deserves and make Austin’s streets safer,” she wrote.
Waymo 发言人伊琳娜表示，公司“已经进行了当前形势下所需的实质性对话”，并已回答了城市官员提出的问题。她写道：“我们将继续与奥斯汀的领导层和急救人员社区合作，因为持续的协作是我们建立这座城市应有的信任并使奥斯汀街道更安全的方式。”
Austin’s Independent School District has also complained in the last few months about Waymo operations, after several incidents where driverless vehicles passed school buses picking up or dropping off schoolchildren with their stop arms extended and alert lights on. In San Francisco, Carroll, the emergency management head, testified before the City Council last month about a widespread December power outage that left more than a thousand Waymos stranded for at least a few minutes as they struggled to navigate intersections without traffic signals. More than 60 Waymos had to be retrieved manually during the three-hour blackout, Waymo later reported.
奥斯汀独立学区在过去几个月里也对 Waymo 的运营提出了投诉，此前发生了多起无人驾驶汽车在校车伸出停车臂、警示灯闪烁并接送学生时强行超车的事件。在旧金山，紧急事务管理局局长卡罗尔上个月在市议会作证时提到，去年 12 月发生的大范围停电导致一千多辆 Waymo 汽车在没有交通信号灯的路口艰难行驶，被困至少几分钟。Waymo 后来报告称，在三小时的停电期间，有 60 多辆 Waymo 汽车不得不被人工回收。
“I definitely stay awake at night thinking about things that could happen and how we integrate this new technology,” Carroll told city leaders. In at least one instance, she reported, a 911 operator waited on Waymo’s hotline for 53 minutes. “Anything that brings a high volume of calls to 911 around these kinds of things can delay response, delay our call time for people that have true life-and-death situations,” she said.
“我确实会彻夜难眠，思考可能发生的事情以及我们如何整合这项新技术，”卡罗尔对城市领导人说。她报告称，至少有一次，一名 911 接线员在 Waymo 的热线上等待了 53 分钟。“任何导致 911 接到大量此类电话的行为，都可能延误响应，延误我们为真正处于生死关头的人提供服务的时间，”她说。