Senator Markey Report Pulls Back the Curtain on Robotaxi Hidden Safety Failures

Traffic Safety Attorney Amy Witherite: AV Companies Are Expanding Aggressively While Concealing How Much They Still Rely on Human Operators

Like the man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz, autonomous vehicle companies have been hiding an uncomfortable truth: their “self-driving” cars still depend heavily on human operators, and they have refused to say how often. That is the finding of a new Senate report , “Remote Backseat Operators: Revealing the Autonomous Vehicle Industry’s Reliance on Human Remote Assistance Operators,” by Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), and it is exactly what traffic safety attorney and Witherite Law Group founder Amy Witherite has been warning about as safety issues keep piling up.

• San Antonio: A Waymo robotaxi drove the wrong way on a one-way street during morning drop-off at Cambridge Elementary.
• Austin: National Transportation Safety Board investigates another case of Waymo passing a stopped school bus — even after claims that the issue was fixed.
• Los Angeles: Waymo drives the wrong way through a drive-thru.

Sen. Markey’s investigation into seven major AV companies, Aurora, May Mobility, Motional, Nuro, Tesla, Waymo, and Zoox, found a troubling patchwork of safety practices.
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