Waymo sues California DMV over driverless vehicle safety stats
Alphabet’s driverless taxi arm Waymo has filed a lawsuit against the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to keep safety-related trade secrets from being made public.
Waymo wants to prevent the release of information related to how its cars act in “restricted conditions”, how it reacts when the vehicle drives outside of the intended operational area, and even how the company analyses car crashes.
The California DMV obtained the information through its autonomous vehicle deployment programme, which requires autonomous vehicle manufacturers to so disclose “significant sensitive trade secrets” for testing to determine whether the car should be allowed to operate on public roads.
The information generally remains confidential but Waymo alleges that the DMV intends to release this information in response to a public records request from an unknown third party.
In a complaint submitted to the Superior Court of the State of California, Waymo said that if this information was made public, it would provide Waymos competitors with “unique insight” into Waymo’s strategy and would harm its “substantial investment” into autonomous technology.
It also claims that allowing the release of this sensitive data would have a “chilling effect” across the autonomous taxi industry.
Waymo said: “Potential market participants interested in deploying autonomous vehicles in California will be dissuaded from investing… if there is a demonstrated track record of their trade secrets being released.”
Divulging data
Waymo submitted to the DMV its application for a permit to deploy autonomous vehicles on public streets, which includes this sensitive data mentioned above, in January 2021
Following the DMV's receipt of Waymo’s complete application in March 2021, the DMV sent “several rounds” of follow up questions to Waymo asking it to divulge “sensitive” trade secret information.
This included proprietary information regarding the situations Waymo’s vehicle will transition control to the driver, the ways in which Waymo asses these “disengagement incidents”, and its assessment of collisions.
The DMV received a request for the release of records related to Waymo in accordance with the California Public Records Act. Waymo responded by providing a redacted version of the application and proprietary information.
The redactions were challenged by the unknown requester and passed to Waymo. Waymo contends that the DMV did not “conduct any independent assessment” on the merits of the redactions.
The DMV advised Waymo that it intended to release the information unless Waymo sought an injunction prohibiting the disclosure of the materials, requiring that the notice of an injunction must be served by January 31, 2022.
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