Robotaxis and driverless cars are a common sight in San Francisco now. California officials’ recent expansion of service and testing has allowed even more of these cars on city streets. Unfortunately for residents, it’s been a headache, with traffic, accidents and other puzzling incidents happening more and more. Now using data provided by the California DMV, The San Francisco Chronicle has created a map that shows just how many incidents involving driverless cars have happened in the city.
Right before the decision to allow the companies to expand service, Cruise and Waymo came forward and told officials just how many driverless cars they had on the city’s streets: Waymo said it has a fleet of 250 vehicles while Cruise has a fleet of 400; 100 during the day and 300 at night. While that seems like a lot, driverless car testing has been going on for nearly a decade. And the California DMV has been keeping track. The agency has records of incidents going back to 2014.
Recently though it seems as if more incidents with these cars have been happening in the city. So The Chronicle used the data from the DMV to create a map of incidents showing incidents involving Cruise, Waymo, Zoosk and other companies operating driverless cars in the city from the beginning of 2022 to mid August 2023. Between the San Francisco area and the LA area, San Francisco has the most incidents in the state.
San Francisco leads as the most common site for these collisions, with 207 incidents, 86% of all instances in the state, according to data as of Aug. 16, the most recent available.
San Francisco’s South of Market area has the highest number of crashes, with 35 since 2022. Polk Gulch and Nob Hill come in second with 25 crashes. Cruise and Waymo also have the highest number of incidents, which makes sense given that they have the most vehicles on city streets.
Between the two major robotaxi companies, Waymo has reported 107 collisions, while Cruise reported 64 out of 241 total reported between 2022 and now. So far, none of these collisions have resulted in any deaths in California.
With the tech seeming as if its not getting better anytime soon, this map may start to look a little more cluttered going into 2024. You can check out the full interactive map on the SF Chronicle website.