Waymo, the driverless-car company operating an autonomous taxi fleet in San Francisco, is suing the California Department of Motor Vehicles. The immediate issue: whether the company, owned by Google parent Alphabet Inc., can hide safety-related information from the public by designating it as a trade secret.
The topics Waymo wants to keep hidden include how it plans to handle driverless-car emergencies, what it would do if a robot taxi started driving itself where it wasn’t supposed to go, and what constraints there are on the car’s ability to traverse San Francisco’s tunnels, tight curves and steep hills. Waymo also wants to keep secret any descriptions of crashes involving its driverless cars.
That’s among the information the DMV requires to determine whether to issue permits to deploy robot vehicles on public roads.
The permit was issued last year. Waymo is focusing on San Francisco, where, for the time being, its robotaxis operate under the supervision of trained human drivers.
The wider issue: how to handle the explosion in “trade secret” claims in an age of artificial intelligence, robot technology, the Internet of Things and pervasive data collection.
The lawsuit, filed Jan. 21 in Sacramento County Superior Court, contends that Waymo would lose out against other driverless-car companies if full permit information were shared with the public.
The suit stems from a public records request to the DMV from an unidentified individual or entity seeking access to Waymo’s driverless-deployment application — the basic filled-out form, attachments of additional material and responses to follow-up questions from the DMV.
Before releasing the material, the DMV invited Waymo to censor sections the company believed would reveal trade secrets. The DMV sent the package to the requester with major portions blacked out, including full concealment of some of the DMV’s own questions.
Whoever asked for the material then challenged the blackouts. According to the lawsuit, the DMV contacted Waymo and invited the company to sue the agency.
“Every autonomous vehicle company has an obligation to demonstrate the safety of its technology, which is why we’ve transparently and consistently shared data on our safety readiness with the public,” Waymo spokesperson Nicholas Smith said via email when asked about the suit. “We will continue to work with the CA DMV to determine what is appropriate for us to share publicly and hope to find a resolution soon.”
Where the DMV stands on the issue remains unclear. The agency has yet to file a response to the suit and told The Los Angeles Times it won’t discuss ongoing legal matters.
In effect, the DMV is shifting responsibility to the court to determine what’s a trade secret, what’s not, and what balance should be struck between corporate claims and public interest. It can take years to resolve such lawsuits. Therefore, if any of the redacted material is made public, it probably won’t be soon.
The matter will remain contentious.
In its lawsuit, Waymo says disclosure of the safety information at issue would cause “a chilling effect across the industry. ... Potential market participants interested in deploying autonomous vehicles in California will be dissuaded from investing valuable time and resources developing this technology if there is a demonstrated track record of their trade secrets being released.”
In this case, a judge will decide. As technology becomes more pervasive, policymakers and the public will continue to contend with what kind of information corporations must reveal and what they’re allowed to hide.
©2022 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
