{"id":16966,"date":"2025-07-10T21:37:58","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T21:37:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=16966"},"modified":"2025-07-10T21:59:23","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T21:59:23","slug":"antiquated-wisconsin-law-doesnt-allow-driverless-vehicles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=16966","title":{"rendered":"Antiquated Wisconsin law doesn\u2019t allow driverless vehicles"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.badgerinstitute.org\/antiquated-wisconsin-law-doesnt-allow-driverless-vehicles\/<\/a><\/p>\n

State stuck at red light<\/em><\/h4>\n
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Image generated with AI technology<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

As self-driving taxis roll out across much of America, Wisconsinites won\u2019t be seeing them without some changes to existing law.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s definitely one part of it,\u201d said Andrea Bill of the Traffic Operations and Safety Laboratory, or TOPS, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. \u201cRight now, our state statute says that there has to be a human behind the wheel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waymo first appeared on Phoenix streets in 2020 and since then has targeted technology centers and Sun Belt cities such as Atlanta, Austin, San Francisco and Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

Waymo is coming to Washington, D.C., Miami and Tokyo next year and testing has begun or will begin soon in Las Vegas, San Diego, New York and seven other cities, according to Waymo officials.<\/p>\n

With five of the country\u2019s 15 most populous cities, Texas got an early start, passing legislation making way for autonomous vehicles in 2017. Waymo launched its service this spring in Austin, but it isn\u2019t the only player.<\/p>\n

Aurora Innovation has begun regular driverless semi-truck routes from Dallas to Houston and intends to expand its service <\/a>to El Paso and Phoenix before the end of this year. Kodiak Robotics is running heavy trucks<\/a> without drivers in Texas\u2019 oil and gas-rich Permian Basin.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re looking for is places that are going to challenge our system and look very, very different,\u201d Nick Rose, a product manager for Waymo, said when he announced<\/a> testing and expansion plans.<\/p>\n

Wisconsin has less than a handful of driverless vehicles used for testing and research. Bill\u2019s lab has a single van and two sedans. Gateway Technical College has a six-passenger electric shuttle, the Racine Badger, housed at Gateway Technical College, that has been tooling around Racine since 2021<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sensors have a little bit of a hard time with giant puddles in the roadway because it doesn\u2019t know how deep it is,\u201d said Bill, the traffic safety engineer research program manager at TOPS.\u00a0Reflections off the water can confuse the vehicle.<\/p>\n

Her team is working on getting the machine, which always has a standby driver poised at the wheel, to understand how to deal with Racine\u2019s drawbridges.<\/p>\n

Winter is also an unconquered problem. Several pilot systems are being tested in Minnesota, including one in the northern paper-mill town of Grand Rapids, where for a couple of years a company called May Mobility has been running minivans outfitted with sensors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ice and snow piece is definitely one where there needs to be more work,\u201d said Kyle Shelton, director of the Center for Transportation at the University of Minnesota. Glare off of ice can compel the standby driver, required by Minnesota law, to take over.<\/p>\n

Not all the questions relate to technology. Bill notes that the Badger test vehicle \u201cis very accurate, so it can go right next to another vehicle with about two inches to spare.\u201d The question there is what riders will find comfortable.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy younger colleagues are like, \u2018It\u2019s totally fine.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

There have been much-publicized reports<\/a> of stalls and passengers locked into their Waymos in Austin and other cities.<\/a> However, the city is tracking Waymo incidents<\/a> and of the 122 reported, only eight of them involved a Waymo colliding with another vehicle, none of them with injuries. Although they don\u2019t provide a comparison, it\u2019s a tiny fraction compared to city traffic involving vehicles with drivers.<\/p>\n

Waymo says<\/a> in the 71 million miles covered by its vehicles, in comparison to human drivers over the same distance in the same cities, its cars produced 88% fewer crashes that lead to serious injuries or death.<\/p>\n

The standards autonomous vehicles are being held to, said Minnesota\u2019s Shelton, \u201care far closer to something like the airline industry, where it\u2019s like no level of risk of accident is tolerated.\u201d He doesn\u2019t say this is inappropriate. As UW-Madison\u2019s Bill puts it, even though human drivers make many mistakes, new technology is under the burden of having prove its safety, especially to regulators and the public. \u201cIt does not take a lot for one piece of technology to be seen as, \u2018Oh, it\u2019s unsafe because it made one mistake.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The payoff, though, can be benefits far beyond \u201ccool-kids\u201d neighborhoods in major cities. Particularly in rural areas, said Shelton, \u201cif you don\u2019t have access to a vehicle or if you cannot drive, you are really dependent on friends or neighbors or whatever system is in place to move you.\u201d Human-driven buses and taxis are costly, and perhaps autonomous vehicles can be less so. Bill cited paratransit \u2014 van-based special transit for the disabled \u2014 as a market, where staff could be attendants rather than having to drive.<\/p>\n

Both researchers said the time is now for officials and lawmakers to consider what self-driving vehicles can do for mobility, including in places where Waymo\u2019s expansion may be years away.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s \u201ca whole spectrum of different opportunities to use automated transportation\u201d in places from urban to rural, said Bill. \u201cWe need to be thinking about how to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bill believes Wisconsin policymakers need to get ready.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would say that the technology and science piece of it is ready now,\u201d she said. \u201cIt will continue to get better and better.\u201d<\/p>\n

How law and bureaucracies deal with the possibilities is not as close to resolution in Wisconsin.<\/p>\n

Patrick McIlheran is the Director of Policy at the Badger Institute; Mark Lisheron is its Managing Editor.<\/em><\/p>\n

Any\u202fuse or reproduction of Badger Institute articles or photographs requires prior written\u202fpermission.\u202fTo request permission to post articles on a website or print copies for distribution, contact Badger Institute Marketing Director Matt Erdman at\u202fmatt@badgerinstitute.org<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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