Seattle among cities looking to prevent robotaxis from rolling into emergencies

Robotaxis are popping up in more U.S. cities. From San Francisco to Phoenix to LA to Austin, many more cities are allowing these driverless taxis on their streets. But that can become an issue when these cars have to navigate the streets when there’s an emergency, like a fire or a big crash.

Seattle is trying to figure out how to get information about emergencies and emergency vehicles to autonomous vehicles quickly. Armand Shahbazian is the electric and automated mobility policy advisor at the Seattle Department of Transportation.

“Cities like Seattle have as many as 800 dispatches a day,” Shabazian said.

Right now, when someone calls 911 in cities with robotaxis like San Francisco and Phoenix, the dispatcher enters the type and location of the emergency and sends an email to robotaxi companies. The companies are then supposed to make sure the cars steer clear.

RELATED: California allows robotaxis to expand and emergency responders aren't happy

Shahbazian pointed out that, “From there, it’s a little bit of a black box because we’re not sure if the companies are able to integrate that information.” He said the companies operating these cars get an alert but getting that message to the cars can be a clunky process.

As Seattle plans for its robotaxi future, it is trying to ensure that robotaxis don’t become obstacles. One example of this is an emergency scene that happened earlier this year in San Francisco, that was recorded by a bystander. While a first responder was in the middle of the street directing traffic, a robotaxi is stopped well into the intersection and blocked three emergency vehicles. Eventually two fire trucks and another responder managed to maneuver around the stopped car.

Seattle has now teamed up with the Open Mobility Foundation, a city-led, open-source nonprofit that builds and governs digital tools and data standards for public spaces. The foundation helped create the data standard that’s now used to manage shared bikes and scooters in many cities. It’s called the Mobility Data Standard.

Shahbazian said that with Seattle’s shared bikes and scooters, “we’re constantly pushing data and receiving data.” He said that it’s used to enforce the rules of the road for more than 40,000 of these so-called micromobility trips a day. And now, the city wants to use the system for robotaxis.

“Autonomous vehicles know that it’s trying to get from point A to point B,” said Andrew Glass Hastings, the executive director of the Open Mobility Foundation. Hastings, who oversees Seattle’s pilot program said that the idea is to connect this 9-1-1 emergency dispatch data directly with the robotaxis so they can avoid the scene entirely.

“It knows the street is closed so it routes around it,” said Hastings, instead of potentially becoming a roadblock.

“Right now, cities have limited tools on how they communicate what's happening on their roadway to services like autonomous vehicles,” said Hastings.

And if it works well with driverless taxis, it could also be a good system for alerting sidewalk robots and delivery pods. Two of the robotaxi companies, Waymo and Zoox are advising the pilot, as well as Google Maps and a number of other cities.

“We didn't want a solution that was Seattle-specific,” Hastings said, “but we wanted to explore an option that would work in cities around the country and potentially around the world.”

Cities around the U.S. are watching because a main sticking point to getting robotaxis on their roads is making sure that they don’t get in the way.

This story originally aired on Marketplace on July 22. Listen to the Marketplace each weekday at 2:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. on KUOW.