Gov. Doug Ducey staged a PR spectacle to to welcome Uber to Arizona. A car hauler toting three self-driving Volvos from California rolled into the Capitol just days before Christmas 2016.
Ducey lured Uber with the promise of hassle-free test driving.
“California may not want you. We want you to know that Arizona does want Uber,” Ducey told reporters.
Ducey’s top aides and Uber executives already had a cozy relationship by the time the Volvos showed up, according to several dozen emails provided to 12 News through a public records request to the governor’s office.
The Guardian newspaper goes a step further: It claims those emails show Ducey and Uber collaborating to let Uber test its self-driving vehicles in secret.
The claim is based largely on an August 2016 email from an Uber executive to Ducey’s deputy chief of staff:
“Starting this weekend, we'll start testing some self-driving functionality ... There will be safety drivers at the wheel, so won't look much different from what's already on the road but wanted to flag it for you nonetheless. I'd also like our team to be able to give local PD a heads up -- do you have a recommendation for someone discreet in Phoenix PD they can reach out to?”
It's hard to argue that self-driving cars were a secret in Arizona in August 2016:
- A Ducey executive order in August 2015 welcomed self-driving vehicles, promising light state oversight.
- At about the same time, Uber announced a small research deal with the University of Arizona.
- Waymo's driverless cars hit the streets in April 2016.
- The governor's self-driving oversight committee met for the first - and only - time in August 2016.
So it was no secret that driverless cars were operating in Arizona. But they all operate in secrecy.
Under Gov. Ducey, Arizona doesn't require Uber or any other operator to report on test drives, vehicle safety or performance. There is the bare minimum of government regulation.
That’s why Arizona's been described as the Wild West for road-testing self-driving vehicles.
The governor’s office had this response to the Guardian story:
From the beginning, Arizona has been very public about the testing and operation of self-driving cars -- it has been anything but a secret. The Governor's Executive Order allowing for the operation and testing of driverless calls was signed a year prior to this email being sent. In addition, the Governor has also demonstrated he will hold companies accountable when necessary, as his letter to Uber this week indicates.
The governor’s coziness with Uber might be viewed in a different light after a Tempe pedestrian was hit and killed 10 days ago by an Uber driverless vehicle.
Ducey was defensive when I asked him about the Uber accident last Friday.
“It's a tragedy, but we have tragedies every day on our roads with humans in the car,” he said.
Later in the day, the New York Times reported on the kind of safety and performance information Arizona doesn't require of driverless operators.
Uber's cars in Arizona "were struggling" before the accident, The Times reported.
One example: Rival Waymo’s vehicles traveled an average of 5,600 miles before the driver had to take control from the computer to avoid trouble. Uber was falling short of its target of 13 miles per “intervention” in Arizona.
Two days later and eight days after the pedestrian was killed, Ducey suspended Uber test drives indefinitely.
Uber had already taken its cars off the road. But Ducey’s statement indicated that he - not Uber - would decide when or if they would return.
That would be the governor's first attempt to regulate driverless cars.