The Daily Agenda: The car crashes of the future

Did Doug Ducey California our roads? ... Democrats infight, too! ... And we back Hamish as ruler of the internet.

We’re turning the top of today’s email over to our friend Evan Wyloge, a former Arizona political reporter now covering real estate in Colorado, who has been analyzing national data about self-driving cars.

Evan recently texted us about his findings in Arizona, and we immediately commissioned him to write something about it for you fine folks.

Please subscribe so our check doesn’t bounce when we pay him.

Arizona is number one for accidents involving fully-autonomous cars on a per capita basis, according to new data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). 

The data provides the most comprehensive look to date on the semi-secretive world of autonomous and semi-autonomous Waymos, Teslas and other vehicles that have been crowding Arizona’s roadways since 2015, when Gov. Doug Ducey first invited them to test out the tech on Arizona’s roadways. 

The state’s grand total isn’t huge: There were just 40 fully-autonomous crashes reported in Arizona since mid-2019, where the data begins. That number, per capita, is what puts Arizona at the top. There were another 22 crashes involving vehicles using semi-autonomous driving. Counting the crashes involving both autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles, Arizona ranks second behind California. 

Tempe takes second place among larger cities¹ for per capita autonomous vehicle crashes, behind only San Francisco. 

But Sacaton, the tiny town about halfway between the Phoenix metro area and Casa Grande, holds the title for Arizona city with the most autonomous and semi-autonomous car crashes per capita, with three reported crashes in a town of just around 2,500 residents.

And while the data would suggest that Arizona is a hotbed for autonomous car crashes, the explanation for our high ranking could be as simple as we have more autonomous cars, as Arizona was an early supporter of the fledgling technology. The data also doesn’t include a key metric to allow us to test that theory: the number of crashes per autonomous vehicle or per mile autonomously driven. 

And to be fair, many of the crashes reported in the NHTSA data are not the autonomous driver’s fault — they’re the fault of a human in another car. Lots of the reported crashes describe the autonomous vehicles being rear-ended in stop-and-go traffic, or collisions caused by other drivers merging into the autonomous vehicles’ lane. 

The data isn’t exactly surprising, given Arizona’s soft-touch regulatory policies aimed at promoting autonomous vehicle use — and the new technology’s tumultuous record.

Arizona stood proudly at the forefront of the self-driving car movement. In 2015, Ducey issued an executive order that paved the way for testing and development of autonomous vehicles. In 2016, after California ordered Uber to stop testing autonomous vehicles in San Francisco, Ducey issued a press release declaring “Arizona welcomes Uber self-driving cars with open arms and wide open roads,” and the tech giant obliged, moving its testing operation to Tempe. 

It wasn’t long before Ducey started opening his arms, and Arizona’s roads, even wider for the tech companies. In March 2018, he expanded on the first executive order by allowing 600 autonomous vehicles to cruise the streets sans drivers. But that same month, a woman was hit and killed in Tempe by an autonomous Uber SUV — the first known pedestrian fatality by an autonomous vehicle — and Uber voluntarily suspended its self-driving program in Arizona for a brief period.

It didn’t last long. By 2021 self-driving Ubers were back on the road, and the Valley had become a magnet for other self-driving vehicle companies. Ducey signed more legislation aimed at streamlining autonomous vehicle use.

Of course, Arizona isn’t the only state trying to become a testing ground for autonomous vehicles. And of course, where there are more autonomous cars, there are going to be more autonomous car crashes. California, Florida and Nevada all have some of the most inviting regulatory schemes for autonomous vehicles, and all are included in the top five list of states by per capita autonomous vehicle crashes.  

A recent Washington Post investigation based on the NHTSA data found that Tesla cars in “Autopilot” mode have been involved in at least 736 crashes since 2019  — far more than had been previously reported — and serious injuries and fatalities are increasing as the technology spreads. The NHTSA has an active investigation into the feature, it confirmed to the Post. 

“The data shows clear flaws in the technology being tested in real time on America’s highways,” the Post writes.

But Tesla CEO Elon Musk tells the Post there’s nothing to worry about — autonomous vehicles are safer than human drivers. That’s debatable, though it will take more studies to say for sure. 

The NHTSA data is the best we’ve got, but it’s woefully limited. About 5% of reported crashes don’t report a location, and the NHTSA’s data also contains some reporting errors, like misspelled city names, so these numbers are still a little squishy.

And the car/tech companies aren’t exactly making it easy. Tesla asked the NHTSA to redact the narratives explaining how its crashes happened. Data on Waymo crashes included narratives but redacted information like the date and exact location. The NHTSA data doesn’t even include other key metrics.

If Arizona is going to open its roadways to every tech company with a car, Arizonans deserve a clear picture of how safe — or not — driverless vehicles are. 

Wannabe congressional Republicans: After nine hours of arguing and 11 separate votes Wednesday (in which some sore losers sat out), Arizona House Democrats have settled the relatively low-stakes battle for who will lead the minority caucus. Rep. Lupe Contreras won the post of House Democratic leader, the Republic’s Mary Jo Pitzl reports, replacing outgoing Democratic Leader Andres Cano, who supported Contreras for the job over his seatmate, Alma Hernandez. During the meeting, Contreras called Hernandez “a child” and yelled at people, according to the Yellow Sheet Report. Hernandez ultimately broke the stalemate between Contreras and Marcelino Quiñonez by supporting Contreras after he apologized to her for his “misogynistic behavior” in front of the caucus, she told the Yellow Sheet.

Seems fair: Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer is suing Kari Lake for defamation, he announced in an op-ed in the Republic, saying her repeated lies about him amount to “a concerted campaign to defame, threaten and isolate [him]” by repeatedly accusing him of “heinous crimes” that courts have found did not even happen (and fundraising off those claims). The lawsuit claims Lake and her PAC met the high bar for defaming a public official and deserve to pay both compensatory and punitive damages. 

“Slinging mud is fair game, but Arizona law and the First Amendment draw a line at defamation. False statements that damage others distort the marketplace of ideas and harm others’ ability to exercise their own free speech rights,” Richer wrote.

The coolest Mormon they know: Politico profiles Republican U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, the “Freedom Caucus firebrand” and “rock-and-roll-loving Mormon,” (with a photo of him in a suit, sneakers and sunglasses). The piece includes a section about his time as president of the Arizona Senate, when his caucus rolled him to enact Medicaid restoration. 

It’s not the actual plan: Gov. Katie Hobbs joined Democratic Rep. Athena Salman’s press conference yesterday announcing a “Right to Contraception Act” that the lawmaker plans to introduce next year to codify access to birth control, the Republic’s Stephanie Innes reports. Salman joined Lauren Gilger on KJZZ’s “The Show” to talk about it, and acknowledged it has little chance in the Republican-controlled Legislature. Reproductive rights advocates are looking to put abortion on the 2024 ballot, which is a much more likely avenue to change the law than through the Legislature. 

It’s a free(ish) market: Citizen initiatives scored a huge victory against the Legislature this week when the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that initiatives can use other bonus-pay structures for petition circulators, as long as they don’t pay per signature, which the Legislature made illegal a few years back amid claims it leads to fraud, Pitzl reports. Political candidates, of course, were not included in that law banning paying circulators on a per-signature basis. Meanwhile, Prop 211, the anti-dark-money initiative voters approved last year, survived a legal challenge in Superior Court that was filed by the Center for Arizona Policy and the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, Arizona’s Law blog reports. The plaintiffs could still appeal, and there’s a separate challenge happening in federal court. 

Promises are easy to make: The Navajo Nation imposed some of the strictest COVID-19 regulations in the nation, including a curfew and a $1,000 fine meant to pay for protective gear for first responders, but few cases were ever prosecuted and tribal administrators never set up a funding mechanism to get that money to first responders, Noel Lyn Smith writes via the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism. 

“In the end, the investigation found, the most consequential legacy of the curfews is the impact on hundreds of residents who were issued citations and who still have them hanging over their heads as a part of their criminal history,” Smith writes.

It’s all a little wobbly: The U.S. Supreme Court narrowly rejected the Navajo Nation’s argument that the federal government has a responsibility to ensure the tribe has access to water, rather than just promises of access to enough water to meet its needs, the New York Times reports. Tucson Water has a draft of its plan to save more water through strategies like accelerating groundwater cleanup efforts and purifying recycled water to drinking water standards, Arizona Public Media’s Paola Rodriguez reports. And the whole world is wobbling a little bit more because of all the groundwater pumping humans are doing, according to a new paper in Geophysical Research Letters, KJZZ’s Nicholas Gerbis reports. 

Good dogs: The now-defunct First Avenue Jail has been turned into an abused and neglected animal care and rehabilitation center run by jail inmates, KJZZ’s Kathy Ritchie reports. 

"They’re rehabilitating themselves while they're rehabilitating the animals, as well," Sgt. Terrell Sheline, the program manager, told Ritchie.

Grow, don’t dig: Former mining town San Manuel is turning to marijuana to reinvigorate its economy decades after the town’s smelters closed, KJZZ’s Matthew Casey reports after a tour of the “huge indoor grow operation” that’s providing desperately needed local money.

“How’s life in San Manuel? It’s, how would I describe, very peaceful. It’s very open. Yeah, it’s like the perfect place to do this," local cannabis cultivator Andrew Garcia said. 

Yay journalists: The Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting won its public records fight with the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office after the county agreed to a settlement that included providing $8,000 in legal fees and the records, which was just a list of former and current department employees.

Two of the worst people we don’t know may fight in a cage, they announced in a cross-promotion publicity stunt. We don’t care if Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk wins the fight. Let’s just leave the cage locked when they’re done!

But we would like to invite Hamish McKenzie, the CEO of our regrettable platform, to join the brawl. He’s just as thin, pale and dorky as the others, but we believe he’s scrappy enough to take them both on. 

Winner gets to rule the internet!

1. We defined large cities as those with a population above 100,000.