SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — Concerns over high lead levels in the water and the ongoing health crisis in Flint, Michigan has some homeowners in the Bay Area concerned about the water in their own homes.

7 On Your Side takes a look at what you can do to ease any fears. The Bay Area’s two largest water agencies have seen a slight increase in calls about lead since the news about Flint broke. Here’s what you can do to protect yourself and your family.

Betsy Rhodes from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission said, “Everybody needs to worry. You don’t want lead in your drinking water, period. No matter how old you are.”

That’s the blunt warning from Rhodes. Four counties in the Bay Area get their water from Hetch Hetchy. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and East Bay Municipal Utility District replaced their lead water pipes in the 1980s. The agencies say their testing found no detectable levels of lead in their drinking water, but that doesn’t mean your home is free of any lead danger.

Rhodes said, “The most common source of that would be old plumbing fixtures.

In Washington D.C. Thursday, a committee held a congressional hearing on the Flint water crisis. Among those testifying was the Oakland-based Center for Environmental Health.

Michael Green from the Center for Environmental Health said, “Across the country, people of color and low income communities remain unfairly at great risk from cancer-causing chemicals, chemicals that cause acute and chronic health problems.”

Green called for greater resources to deal with the issue on a national level. Here’s what you can do to protect yourself. Contact your local water agency and inquire about lead testing. In San Francisco you can request a lead test kit for $25.

“What you’re supposed to do is the tap that you’re concerned about, don’t use the tap for 6-12 hours before this test,” Rhodes said.

Fill the bottle up with water and you should get your test results back in two to four weeks. Last year less than 10 percent of the test conducted discovered any lead in the drinking water.

Here are links to information from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and EBMUD on lead testing.

East Bay Municipal Utility District water quality information

Click here to check out San Francisco water quality. Click on the lead information, and all the numbers, emails, contact information about lead testing is there.

If a homeowner is concerned about the lead levels in their water, please contact your water provider.

The SFPUC says they have been working for decades to remove all lead-containing plumbing components in their system and to optimize corrosion control in order to minimize the level of lead that could enter into the drinking water system.

The post 7 On Your Aspect: Why you need to take a look at your house water faucet for lead appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

NEW YORK — After announcing a collaboration with Intermountain Health spinout Culmination Bio earlier this week, Cofactor Genomics is moving “aggressively” to advance its OncoPrism test, which can predict whether patients with a number of cancers are likely to develop cancers will benefit from immunotherapy.

San Francisco-based Cofactor has validated OncoPrism, an RNA sequencing-based T-cell subtyping and immune cell quantification test, in the United States ADJUST AHEAD Study using anonymized tumor samples and matched clinical data. According to Jarret Glasscock, CEO of Cofactor, the goal is to commercialize OncoPrism as a tool to identify the patients most likely to respond to PD-1/L1 checkpoint inhibitors such as Merck’s Keytruda (pembrolizumab) or Bristol’s Opdivo (nivolumab). Approach Myers Squibb.

The prospective observational study has a target enrollment of 1,650 patients across 11 cancer types. But the new Culmination partnership is also critical to validating the test, Glasscock said, as it gives Cofactor access to a database of 4.5 million patient samples, each with data on longitudinal clinical outcomes as well as whole-genome, transcriptome, Exome sequencing and proteomics data are aligned. and other omics analysis.

This wealth of data, which Culmination calls its “Culmination Intelligence Platform”, is offered to partners such as Cofactor. Although the prospective validation of OncoPrism using samples collected in PREDAPT is critical to demonstrate its predictive power across multiple cancer types, Glasscock says the data from Culmination Cofactor offers significant benefits, not just in terms of the sheer number of patient samples in the repository, but also in terms of time.

“We need to know the patient outcomes of these immunotherapy treatments [to validate OncoPrism]. “With the prospective data that will be collected as part of PREDAPT, we will have to wait months for the outcome to have the full data,” Glasscock said. “For prospective studies, we wait for patients.” [to respond]The value of Culmination Bio is that these patient samples and the high quality patient data have already been collected and stored. This allows us to move forward with our efforts much faster.”

Cofactor’s OncoPrism test is essentially an immune profiling platform, as described by Glasscock. “We are looking at the most meaningful gene expression signatures, which can be assigned to the immune cell types and immune cell states, and which are most likely to allow predictions about possible responders and non-responders to immunotherapy,” he said, explaining that the OncoPrism platform essentially provides a measurement of these several analytes. “The clinical data comes into play when we train the model to say, ‘What does a profile look like for lung cancer responders? What does a non-responder profile look like?’”

While the OncoPrism platform is already in place, the millions of linked clinical data in the Culmination Intelligence Platform will help Cofactor train its test to predict immunotherapy responses in different types of cancer, much faster.

To date, Cofactor has made the most progress validating OncoPrism for predicting which head and neck cancer patients will benefit from immunotherapy, in what Glasscock described as the company’s “curbstone indication”. In September 2022, The company presented data This shows that OncoPrism more accurately predicted the anti-PD-1 benefit in head and neck cancer patients than immunohistochemistry-based PD-L1 expression, which many oncologists consider “on”.lousy biomarker” to identify the best responders to immunotherapy. In this study, OncoPrism showed a 75 percent accuracy in predicting immune checkpoint inhibitor responders, while PD-L1 immunohistochemistry tests showed an accuracy of 42 percent.

With this readout, Cofactor is “on the right track in head and neck cancer” and, according to Glasscock, is aiming to commercialize OncoPrism in this setting as a lab-developed test in the “very near future,” according to Glasscock. He added that the company is already working with physicians across the country to prepare for commercial launch in the treatment of head and neck cancer later this year, and eyeing lung cancer shortly thereafter.

“We’re nearing the finish line, but I’m also very excited about the next nine cancer indications and how Culmination’s data will really accelerate timelines for those,” he said, noting that Cofactor placed particular emphasis on the depth and quality of the Data places points that partners can query in Culmination Bio’s repository when attempting to identify populations of interest.

Spinout Intermountain Health – which was incorporated as a company in June 2022 and launched publicly in March 2023 – is showcasing its Culmination Intelligence Platform as a search engine for building precision medicine cohorts. According to the information on the website, partners can query the data archive based on factors such as age, gender, race, cancer type, biomarker status and ICD codes, and focus on the patient cohort they wish to study.

“Culmination Bio was designed to expand the success of Intermountain’s precision medicine efforts by creating multimodal longitudinal datasets,” said Lincoln Nadauld, Culmination’s CEO, in a statement in March announcing the formation of the company. “Our partnership with Intermountain Health has enabled us to build a platform that will revolutionize the way we identify new clinical insights and translate them to the benefit of patients.”

Culmination Bio, which has not disclosed any partnerships other than those with Cofactor, declined an interview for this article. Therefore, no details are known about the diversity and geographical representation of the database. Intermountain Health operates 33 hospitals primarily in Utah, Idaho and Nevada, but also has affiliated locations in other areas.

“I know [Intermountain] They’ve been building this database for decades and it’s an extensive collection of samples that they use in their own homes,” Glasscock said. “This commercial launch of Culmination Bio is an attempt to harness this rich resource outside of your four walls.”

The post Cofactor Rapidly Transferring Immunotherapy Predictive Take a look at to Market With Information From Intermountain Spinout appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey (Image credit: Instagram)

Woody Harrelson finally responds to McConaughey’s claim that they could be brothers. The True Detective co-stars have been close friends for years, but a recent discovery may have revealed another connection between the two accomplished actors. Now actor Woody Harrelson has announced that he wants to take a DNA test to determine if he and Matthew McConaughey are half brothers.

When Harrelson appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the actor acknowledged the possibility that the two actors could be brothers, saying, “There’s some truth to that thought.” He also said, “We want to go and ( do a DNA test, but for him it’s a much bigger deal.” “I mean, he feels like he’s losing a father. But I think no, you’ll get another father and another brother.”

In an interview with Kelly Ripa last week, McConaughey revealed, “It’s a little bit harder for me because he’s asking me to take a chance and go, ‘Wait a minute, you’re telling me my dad might not be my dad of 53 years’ and believe in it? I’ve got a little more skin in it.”

The two will be reunited in the upcoming comedy Brother From Another Mother on Apple TV. Justin Theroux, who will star alongside Harrelson in the HBO series White House Plumbers, said in an interview that he wouldn’t be surprised if McConaughey and Harrelson turned out to be half brothers.

How did Harrelson and McConaughey meet?

Harrelson and McConaughey first met in 1997 while filming Ron Howard’s EDtv, although the exact time is unknown. He recalls first meeting Harrelson at a wardrobe fitting for EDtv in San Francisco, where the actor was “wearing cycling shorts and a professional cycling jersey and still has his professional cycling shoes on, in which he walks the streets of San Francisco .” McConaughey and Harrelson have since collaborated on the critically acclaimed police thriller series True Detective and the film Surfer, Dude.

The post Woody Harrelson requires DNA check as he confirms Matthew McConaughey’s revelation about being brothers appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Photographer: Jeff Chiu/AP

By David M Greenwald
executive editor

Los Angeles, CA – There were a lot of bad media takes coming out of the primary election two weeks ago—and a lot of them were due to a rush to judgment because the media failed to understand that the old rules largely do not apply anymore as to how ballots come in and get counted. That led to premature calls.

It still looks like Chesa Boudin will get recalled, but by a 10-rather than a 20-point margin. One of the bad takes has been the use of San Francisco as evidence for the limits of progressivism and even a warning to Democrats for the fall, and perhaps even deeper.

Gil Duran’s otherwise good piece warned, “The primary election in California last week conveyed a warning to Democrats about the political threat posed by rising public anger toward the increasingly visible poverty and disorder on city streets — in this case, San Francisco’s.”

It makes sense on one level—San Francisco has been consistently one of the nation’s most progressive and reliably blue cities in the country, and, as Duran put it, while Chesa Boudin became a scapegoat for the problems in the community, “[h]is loss in a recall attempt had much to do with California’s chronic failure to deal with homelessness, mental illness and poverty. These issues will persist without him.”

But what if San Francisco is not really the best test case for such issues?

San Francisco, after all, is hardly the first city to see a backlash against a progressive prosecutor. We saw heavy money thrown into DA’s races last year in Philadelphia and St. Louis, to name two. However, in each of those, the incumbent DA was (a) running against a named opponent with a record and agenda they could push back on, and (b) was able to prevail—overwhelmingly.

Boudin did not get a tangible opponent, but the big difference might be the demographics in San Francisco.

This is a point made by Erika Smith, an LA Times columnist, who argued yesterday that Los Angeles rather than San Francisco could become the most progressive city in California (and by virtue of that, the nation).

(One thing to bear in mind is that George Gascón faces a recall in Los Angeles, but, unlike San Francisco where the county is limited to the city of San Francisco, Los Angeles County encompasses a number of much more conservative areas, which could make it more dicey for Gascon).

But Smith points to things like the apparent victory of abolitionist City Council member Eunisses Hernandez over formidable establishment Democrat Gil Cedillo for City Council.

Moreover, there is also Hugo Soto-Martinez, “who campaigned on having fewer cops and repeating the law that allows the city to remove homeless encampments, has pulled ahead of incumbent City Councilman Mitch O’Farrell in District 13.”

Moreover, “In citywide races, it’s much the same thing. For controller, progressive activist Kenneth Mejia was the top vote-getter and faces City Councilman Paul Koretz in a runoff in November. For city attorney, civil rights lawyer Faisal Gill is in the lead after vowing to repeal the city’s anti-camping law and enact a pause on prosecutions to evaluate the “unacceptably broad” charging of misdemeanors.”

She also notes “in the mayoral race, Rep. Karen Bass has pulled ahead of billionaire developer Rick Caruso, with those who voted by mail overwhelmingly choosing her more liberal approach to addressing crime, policing and homelessness.”

That was one of the bad media calls that proclaimed him a winner before the votes were all counted. Suddenly that race looks very different.

“This progressive surge has made itself competitive,” said Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of Cal State LA’s Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs as quoted in her column. “And that’s a big deal.”

Smith notes, “Los Angeles is one of the most progressive cities in the country, but it’s rarely thought of as the most liberal city in the state. That title usually goes to San Francisco.”

“There is a perception of San Francisco as more liberal than LA,” Sonenshein said, “back to the days when LA was more conservative than it is today. I’m talking 30, 40, 50 years ago.”

Here I think is probably the most important point, she writes: “Nevertheless, given Boudin’s national profile, it was that vote that launched a thousand ill-thought-out think pieces and several more thousand speculative tweets.”

Los Angeles has probably become more progressive, certainly since the 1980s, but a big factor that many have failed to recognize—San Francisco has become much more affluent, in part due to the housing affordability crisis, and, as such, much less diverse and more white.

Whereas Kim Gardner in St. Louis and Larry Krasner in Philadelphia could tap into huge bases of black voters when the going got tough, Chesa Boudin was hung out to dry when normally progressive upper middle class white voters panicked at perceptions of rising crime rates.

Writes Smith, “Contributing to this has been the influx of tech wealth, followed by the housing affordability crisis. San Francisco has become a far more affluent city than it once was and far less of a working-class one, with even teachers forced to become super commuters. And this has had an impact on diversity.”

“Everybody’s seen ‘The Last Black Man in San Francisco,’” Melina Abdullah, a professor of pan-African studies at Cal State LA, quipped about the 2019 film, the plot of which is exactly what it sounds like.

“You’re starting to see—I mean, maybe not even starting—what you’re seeing is people who we’d assume would be liberal have their class-based interests and are voting their class, rather than voting along with working- class people of color,” she added.

John Pfaff, a law professor at Fordham University, noted in a June 5 tweet that San Francisco is only 5 percent Black compared with Philadelphia (44 percent) and St. Louis (46 percent).

He noted before the election that the notion “if liberal SF can’t vote for a progressive, then… who will??” has traction but “gets the racial politics of all this wrong: SF is (progressive), but MUCH whiter than most cities (with progressive) DAs.”

Pfaff believes that support for reform from white progressives is much less reliable than for people of color.

As he told Smith, “Crime is an abstraction for most of them—for most of us… You read about it, you hear about it, but the moment crime is closer to you, it’s kind of shocking and appalling. But the Black community, they not only experience the violence, they experience the policing. It’s not abstract for them. The fundamental humanization of it explains why there’s more support for reform.”

Put another way, for many white upper middle-class voters—even those who are progressive—they favor reform over there, when the threat is away from them and they are safe and secure in their homes of privilege.

What we learned is that white upper middle-class voters run from reform when they perceive it as a threat to their affluence and comfort, and that’s why reform has succeeded in places like Philadelphia and the like but not San Francisco.

Smith makes one other point that is important, “That’s one more thing going for progressive politics in Los Angeles, which could make getting rid of Gascón harder than getting rid of Boudin in San Francisco.

“While working-class people of color continue to be displaced from the city of LA, many remain in the county, relocating to Palmdale and other, cheaper high desert locales. Those priced out of San Francisco generally have no choice but to leave the city and the county, as the boundaries are basically the same.”

Even though housing costs are rising in Los Angeles, outstripping wages, it may not have the same impact as it did in San Francisco.

“There is time for those who want a progressive agenda to make sure that we don’t go the way of San Francisco,” Melina Abdullah said.

But again, there is a flip side to that—there are a lot of more conservative areas in Los Angeles than there are in San Francisco. So we’ll see how this plays out.

The post Commentary: Why San Francisco Could Not Be the Finest Check Case for Progressivism appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

The coronavirus test positivity rate in San Francisco, which tracks the percentage of tests coming back positive for COVID-19, topped 14% on Wednesday, according to city data. That is the second-highest rate the city has reached to date.

“Cases are high — they are still high — although they are lower than during the omicron surge of BA.1 this winter,” said Dr. Susan Philip, the city’s health officer during a health commission meeting Tuesday.

The seven-day average climbed up to 18.9% this January during the winter surge before dropping to 2.4% in mid-March. It has been rising steadily since and is now far higher than the statewide average of 8.9%.

A rule of thumb among infectious disease experts is that 5% is considered “too high,” according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University.

San Francisco reached a pre-omicron peak of 13.4% in April 2020.

Medical Assistant Cindy Mont, left, administers a COVID test on Victor Torres, a food delivery driver who delivers food to people under quarantine, at a community testing site managed by Unidos En Salud in the Mission District of San Francisco, California Friday, Jan. 7, 2022.

Stephen Lam / The Chronicle

Alongside Santa Clara and San Mateo, San Francisco is the county with the highest coronavirus infection rate in the state. It reported an average of 57 cases per 100,000 residents as of Friday, the most recent day with confirmed data. That is up from about 43 per 100,000 a month ago. And that number is likely an undercount since many people now rely on at-home tests that don’t usually get reported or added to official case counts.

George Lemp, an infectious disease expert who is retired from the University of California, said in an email to The Chronicle that case numbers may be four times higher than what is reported.

“It is unfortunate that current cases of Omicron BA.2/BA.2.12.1 are highly underreported,” he said. “This makes it very difficult to track pandemic trends and to assess current prevention efforts. We are somewhat limited to tracking hospitalizations, deaths, and to conducting wastewater surveillance. In other countries, such as England, large population-based sampling serosurveys have provided much more information on the scope and trends of the epidemic.”

The uptick comes as San Francisco’s new budget eliminates funding for multiple community coronavirus test sites in the Mission and Bayview districts, some of the city’s hardest-hit neighborhoods by the coronavirus.

“Our health programs would close in the next 30 days,” Ivan Corado-Vega, manager for the Latino Task Force, told ABC. His organization has tested more than 90,000 people and vaccinated more than 60,000 since establishing the sites, which employ nearly 200 people.

Community leaders say with the city experiencing another surge of cases and hospitalizations, the results of the cuts could be devastating. There were 86 people in the hospital with COVID in San Francisco as of Wednesday — a nearly 50% increase in the past month.

“At our testing sites, we are seeing double-digit positive rates. At both of our sites here in the Mission. For the Excelsior site, we are seeing positive rates in the 20s, so COVID is here,” said Corado-Vega.

San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Shamann Walton said shutting down the testing sites is “devastating to our communities of need.”

Mayor London Breed’s office blamed state and federal officials for the lack of resources.

“There will be less funding overall for our COVID response in our upcoming budget,” it said in a statement. “But the mayor’s budget still includes $57 million for San Francisco’s ongoing COVID response in the upcoming budget, including $3 million for community hubs.”

Five Bay Area counties — Marin, Napa, Santa Clara, Solano and Sonoma — are in the highest risk category as defined by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And Alameda County became the first in the state to reinstate a local indoor mask mandate, largely in response to spiking COVID hospitalizations.

Health officials in San Francisco and other Bay Area counties have so far resisted reimposing any mitigation measures, despite waning vaccine immunity and the rapid emergence of multiple coronavirus variants.

“Severe disease resulting in hospitalizations is not as high as during the winter surge, fortunately,” Philip said. “We now have readily available high-quality masks like N95s, KN95s and KF94s. Most importantly, we have among the highest rates of vaccination in the world in our city.”

Aidin Vaziri (he/him) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: avaziri@sfchronicle.com

The post San Francisco COVID constructive take a look at at second-highest degree ever appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

A couple of friends and I were out for a late-night walk at about 3 am on New Year’s Day when a Waymo self-driving car came rolling down 16th St. Then came another, and then another, and another. We stared in disbelief as at least a dozen tricked out SUVs glided by, silent but for the whirring of their lidar sensors.

Perhaps these four-wheeled robots had just come from a New Year’s party of their own.

While a motorcade’s worth of autonomous vehicles remains at an unusual sight, a self-driving car can be seen every minute or two in some parts of San Francisco. A growing number of these vehicles are now transporting passengers in fully autonomous mode, meaning there’s no backup driver behind the wheel.

San Francisco is the epicenter of autonomous vehicle testing in California, if not the world, where subsidiaries of leading companies — Google, General Motors and Amazon — teach their fleets the subtleties of city driving. If an autonomous vehicle (AV) can handle the chaotic conditions on the streets of San Francisco, these companies believe, it can handle just about anything.

Yet AVs remain something of a mystery to the general public — and not just because of their incredible technological capabilities. Basic information like how many AVs are being tested in San Francisco, where, exactly, they are permitted to travel without a backup driver and other details of their operation is difficult to find or unavailable to the public.

An Examiner investigation, consisting of public records requests, data searches, and interviews with regulators and AV companies bears out what’s obvious to city residents: The streets of San Francisco have become a giant, photogenic AV test course, where this technology will show its promise and perils in real time.

AV Capital

In a fast-moving field, where companies fiercely protect their trade secrets, precise data on autonomous vehicle testing and deployment can be difficult to come by. However, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) has made some educated guesses.

“It’s possible that there has been more automated driving on SF streets than in any other major city in the world,” said Julia Friedlander, senior manager for autonomous vehicles at the SFMTA.

While 50 companies are registered to test autonomous vehicles in California, just two companies, both of which primarily test their vehicles in San Francisco, accounted for more than 75% of the 4.1 million miles traveled by autonomous vehicles in the state last year, according to data from the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).

Waymo, a Google subsidiary, notched more than 2.3 million miles in 567 vehicles in 2021, the majority of which took place in San Francisco, the company confirmed. Cruise, a subsidiary of GM, recorded 876,000 miles of autonomous driving in 168 vehicles last year, all in San Francisco. Both companies do drivered and driverless vehicle testing, and offer limited driverless passenger ride-hail services.

Zoox, an Amazon subsidiary that tests in San Francisco as well as on the Peninsula, added 155,000 miles in 57 vehicles.

It’s no surprise that San Francisco, with its proximity to Silicon Valley, its varied geography and its (relatively) mild weather, would become a popular place to test AVs.

“We developed our vehicle in one of the most complex environments possible — San Francisco — to ensure that our vehicle can drive safely in even the most unpredictable circumstances and conditions,” Cruise wrote in a permit application obtained by The Examiner.

San Francisco also has value from a branding perspective. Its breathtaking views and unbelievably steep streets — the backdrop for so many movie car chases — figure prominently in the marketing materials for all three major AV companies testing in The City.

No city oversight

Even though a large majority of AV testing in the state takes place in San Francisco, the city has essentially no oversight over these companies’ operations. That responsibility falls to the state DMV, which regulates AV testing, and the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), which regulates commercial operations like Cruise and Waymo’s ride hail services.

The DMV and CPUC do not require AV companies to disclose where their vehicles have traveled within California, meaning it’s impossible to know the exact extent to which their operations are concentrated in San Francisco.

State regulations have been a source of contention for SFMTA, which is accustomed to exercising broad regulatory power over The City’s streets, and sharing transportation data with the public. Over the past several years, the agency and other city departments have regularly submitted comments to the DMV and CPUC as they craft autonomous vehicle regulations.

The City has unsuccessfully fought for caps on the number of AVs deployed for ride hailing services, detailed origin and destination data to better manage traffic and universal wheelchair accessibility, among other policies.

SFMTA’s lobbying has been directly informed by its experience with ride hailing services like Uber and Lyft, which it says have undermined public transit and increased congestion. The agency is continuing to fight for state regulations that require disability access, safe pickup and drop off practices, and zero-emissions electric vehicles, Friedlander said. (Currently, Zoox vehicles and some Waymo vehicles are gas-powered.)

“AV companies and state regulators need to see cities as key stakeholders and work with us to maximize the benefits while minimizing the negative effects that could come from adding multiple new fleets of cars to San Francisco roads,” Friedlander said.

While he agrees with many of these concerns, Marcel Moran, a PhD candidate in urban planning at UC Berkeley who has studied AV policy, thinks the solutions are already clear.

“I can understand the rationale for wanting more information. But there’s also policy decisions that would make a difference regardless of vehicle type,” Moran said, citing examples like congestion pricing and transit-only lanes.

Situation on the streets

It’s only natural that AVs, with their bulky rooftop rigs, conspicuous branding and awe-inspiring technological promise, would attract extra attention from the public. They’ve also been observed behaving strangely: Consider the 50 Waymos per day that continually returned to a Richmond cul de sac last fall, or the platoon of Waymos I observed cruising the Castro in the early hours of 2022.

Waymo vehicles, mostly electric Jaguar I-Pace SUVs as well as some gas-powered Chrysler Pacifica minivans, go on different missions throughout The City to train the Waymo Driver, its proprietary artificial intelligence, in different environments, a company spokesperson said. The vehicles sometimes travel in groups back to base after a shift.

Cruise, which uses modified electric Chevy Bolts with nicknames like Poppy and Tostada, also drive around The City to practice certain driving skills and to more accurately map the urban environment, a company spokesperson said. Cruise vehicles can learn 40 times more quickly in San Francisco than in a more suburban environment like the Phoenix area, another location where both Cruise and Waymo test their vehicles.

AV companies approved for testing with a backup driver can travel almost anywhere in California. However, driverless commercial operations have a more limited geography. Cruise’s operational domain for its free, late-night ride hail service (available only to a select few members of the public) covers parts of the Richmond, Sunset, and Fillmore, and only includes streets with a speed limit of 30 miles per hour or less. Cruise plans to expand its operational domain to encompass 70% of The City in the near future, a spokesperson said.

Waymo redacted its operational domain for driverless passenger service from documents sent to SFMTA, following approval from the CPUC, citing proprietary trade secrets. The company also declined to share its operational domain with The Examiner. Waymo’s vehicles are approved to drive themselves at speeds of up to 65 miles per hour, and are currently providing driverless rides to employees in a portion of San Francisco.

With truly driverless cars now circulating The City, locals might wonder what would happen if these vehicles are involved in an accident, or get pulled over by the police.

It turns out, there’s a plan for that.

In their state-mandated “law enforcement interaction plans,” Cruise and Waymo explain how law enforcement officers can enter their vehicles and find the registration, and how first responders should act in all manner of unfortunate situations (a vehicle underwater, on fire, etc .) The companies also detail their cybersecurity efforts to prevent hackers from — in the absolute worst case — hijacking their fleets.

Regulatory frontiers

California regulators and the AV companies themselves have been forced to navigate these sci-fi scenarios in the absence of federal regulation. During the Trump Administration, when “regulations were considered evil,” the already slow process of regulating AVs was put on pause, says Steve Shladover, a research engineer at Partners for Advanced Transportation Technology at UC Berkeley, and an AV consultant for the DMV.

“In an ideal world, the federal government would have stepped out earlier and would have taken the lead on (regulations), but that didn’t happen,” Shladover said, adding that the Biden Administration has restarted the process of crafting AV regulations. In March, the US Department of Transportation released new rules to ensure that custom-built AVs, including the pod-like vehicles that are currently being developed by Cruise and Zoox, are still subject to rigorous safety standards.

California’s regulations could use some work, as well. Current data reporting “only gives a very limited view of the maturity of the technology,” Shladover said. “I believe that there will need to be disclosure of a lot more information about the way the systems are designed and developed and about their performance.”

California regulations require that AV companies report every collision and every “disengagement,” when a human backup driver has to take over for the computer. The latter requirements need to be more precise and consistent, Shladover said.

Protecting proprietary trade secrets and ensuring safe operations is “a very difficult balancing act” that might demand new layers of separation between publicly accessible information, and information accessible only to regulators, Shladover said. In a test of these boundaries, Waymo in January sued the DMV to block it from responding to a public records request for more detailed data on collisions, disengagements, and Waymo’s operational domain in San Francisco.

The stakes of this technological arms race could not be higher. Some of the world’s biggest companies are plowing billions of dollars into this technology, hoping for a revolution in freight and passenger transport. AVs, which are never distracted and are programmed to follow the rules of the road, could provide huge safety benefits in a country where cars kill 40,000 people per year, and represent the leading cause of death for teenagers.

But the industry has also sparked fear in labor groups worried about robo-drivers taking their jobs, environmentalists worried about massive increases in driving and emissions, and city governments hoping to prevent gridlock.

Today, the impact of AVs on the roads is a San Francisco story. But at some point in the future, the rest of the country and world will have to reckon with this new technology.

bschneider@sfexaminer.com

A map of areas where Cruise’s fully driverless vehicles provide late-night ride hail service. (SFMTA)

A cruise autonomous vehicle in traffic. (Craig Lee/The Examiner)

Amazon’s Zoox lags behind in testing miles, though it’s working to roll out a new pod-like vehicle. (Craig Lee/The Examiner)

The post How San Francisco grew to become an autonomous automobile take a look at course appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

GILROY (KPIX) – After an examiner failed a teenager who was driving a Tesla because of its unique braking system, the California Department of Motor Vehicles instructed its employees to treat electric vehicles the same way as traditional gasoline vehicles while they are behind the car driving -cycling tests.

Notice to agency staff will follow a driving test on November 23 at the Gilroy office, 6984 Automall Parkway.

CONTINUE READING: A’s, Giants players banned as MLB owners vote to trigger first job hiatus since 1995

Bryce Rosenblum, 16, began his driving test with the DMV instructor in a Tesla Model 3 with regenerative braking activated in standard mode.

“She warns me immediately that the car will slow down by itself, like a stop sign. And she told me that happened twice before we even left the parking lot. And then the test continues. We did everything a test should have. And then she pulled me in and told me I had failed, ”said Bryce Rosenblum.

The Model 3’s regenerative braking system, like most electric vehicles, is activated when the driver releases the accelerator. The system then recovers the vehicle’s kinetic energy, charges the battery and slows the vehicle down without using the brakes.

According to the teenager, the DMV instructor did not order him to disable the regenerative braking system.

In the comments section of the driving test results sheet, the driving instructor wrote: “The applicant did not slow down the car. Do not put your foot on the brake until the car has slowed down and stopped. “

“And so I asked her what I could do next time to pass the exam. And she told me not to take a Tesla and just borrow someone else’s car. Bring that from someone else who has an engine instead of a real electric car, ”said Bryce Rosenblum.

Bryce’s father, Neal Rosenblum, filed a complaint with the local office and escalated matters to the supervisor and regional manager.

Neal remembered talking to the teacher immediately after the failed test.

CONTINUE READING: San Francisco suspends cannabis tax to combat illegal marijuana sales

“This is a broken process,” said Neal Rosenblum. “In essence, what she said was that the car brakes on its own. And I said, ‘Okay, but that’s how the car works.’ And she said, ‘But he has to show me that he can actually move his foot from the accelerator to the brake.’ And I said, ‘Ma’am, the car wasn’t set up like that. If he takes his foot off the accelerator and starts to hit the brakes, the car will stop in the middle of the road. ‘”

Apparently, during driving tests, the agency was aware of problems with regenerative braking in electric vehicles for several months.

In August 2021, Teslarati released a report of a similar failed test.

According to the report, “the DMV inspector informed the Tesla owner that the ‘automatic activation’ of the Model 3 had failed. The examiner further explained that she could feel the brakes even if the physical brake pedal was not pressed. ”

The Teslarati report states that at this point the agency is “working to ensure that inspectors have an understanding of the function and its implications for driving”.

KPIX made a query to the agency’s Public Affairs Office regarding Bryce Rosenblum’s complaint and received a response a few hours later:

Thank you for your inquiry about the behind the wheel driving test from Bryce Rosenblum. DMV’s Field Operations Division has reviewed the driving test score sheet and determined that the driving test score will be revised as passed. The customer’s attention is drawn to the fact that his license should arrive soon by post.

The DMV has issued guidelines for staff on the use of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) or electric vehicles (EV) equipped with a regenerative braking system and / or a single-pedal braking function for each driving test. If a customer is using a PHEV or EV with regenerative braking for their driving test, staff were advised not to postpone the test as the vehicle is equipped with a regenerative braking system and / or a single-pedal braking function. Follow the existing drive test criteria when evaluating the test and the application of the regenerative braking system must not be used as the sole reason for evaluating a driving error or a critical driving error.

The Rosenblum family praised the DMV for the prompt response.

“I mean, I have to take my hat off to make them move so fast because that was just amazing,” said Neal Rosenblum. “I think in the end I felt a little confirmed. So, yes, it felt good. “

MORE NEWS: World AIDS Day: Santa Clara health officials reflect on four decades of fighting HIV and learn from lessons learned about COVID-19

“It’s kind of cool how fast they move because they’re known to be slow,” said Neal Rosenblum. “I think it’s important to stand by something you believe in. So if you believe in something strongly enough, you should fight for it. “

The post San Jose Teen Fails Driving Take a look at Due To Tesla Regenerative Braking System – CBS San Francisco appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

GILROY (KPIX) – After an examiner failed a teenager who was driving a Tesla because of its unique braking system, the California Department of Motor Vehicles instructed its employees to treat electric vehicles the same way as traditional gasoline vehicles while they are behind the car drive -cycling tests.

Notice to agency staff will follow a driving test on November 23 at the Gilroy office at 6984 Automall Parkway.

CONTINUE READING: Governor Newsom hires California Highway Patrol to help stop retail robberies

Bryce Rosenblum, 16, began his driving test with the DMV instructor in a Tesla Model 3 with regenerative braking enabled in standard mode.

“It warns me straight away that the car will slow down by itself, like a stop sign. And she told me that happened twice before we even left the parking lot. And then the test continues. We did everything a test should have. And then she pulled me in and told me I had failed, ”said Bryce Rosenblum.

The Model 3’s regenerative braking system, like most EVs, is activated when the driver releases the accelerator. The system then recovers the vehicle’s kinetic energy, charges the battery and slows the vehicle down without using the brakes.

According to the teenager, the DMV instructor did not order him to disable the regenerative braking system.

In the comments section of the driving test results sheet, the driving instructor wrote: “The applicant did not slow down the car. Do not put your foot on the brake until the car has slowed down and stopped. “

“And so I asked her what I could do next time to pass the exam. And she told me not to take a Tesla and just borrow someone else’s car. Bring that from someone else who has an engine instead of a real electric car, ”said Bryce Rosenblum.

Bryce’s father, Neal Rosenblum, filed a complaint with the local office and escalated matters to the supervisor and regional manager.

Neal remembered talking to the teacher immediately after the failed test.

CONTINUE READING: COVID: The Omicron variant has some Bay Area families revising their vacation travel plans

“This is a broken process,” said Neal Rosenblum. “In essence, what she said was that the car brakes on its own. And I said, ‘Okay, that’s how the car works.’ And she said, ‘But he has to show me that he can actually move his foot from the accelerator to the brake.’ And I said, ‘Ma’am, the car wasn’t set up like that. If he takes his foot off the accelerator and starts to hit the brakes, the car will stop in the middle of the road. ‘”

Apparently, the authority had become aware of problems with regenerative braking in electric vehicles during driving tests for several months.

In August 2021, Teslarati released a report of a similar failed test.

According to the report, “the DMV inspector informed the Tesla owner that the Model 3 ‘automatic activation’ had failed. The examiner further explained that she could feel the brakes even if the physical brake pedal was not pressed. ”

The Teslarati report states that at this point the agency is “working to ensure that inspectors have an understanding of the function and its implications for driving”.

KPIX made a query to the agency’s Public Affairs Office regarding Bryce Rosenblum’s complaint and received a response a few hours later:

Thank you for your inquiry about the behind the wheel driving test from Bryce Rosenblum. DMV’s Field Operations Division has reviewed the driving test score sheet and determined that the driving test score will be revised as passed. The customer’s attention is drawn to the fact that his license should arrive soon by post.

The DMV has issued guidelines for staff on the use of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) or electric vehicles (EV) equipped with a regenerative braking system and / or a single-pedal braking function for each driving test. If a customer is using a PHEV or EV with regenerative braking for their driving test, staff were advised not to postpone the test as the vehicle is equipped with a regenerative braking system and / or a single-pedal braking function. Follow the existing drive test criteria when evaluating the test and the application of the regenerative braking system must not be used as the sole reason for evaluating a driving error or a critical driving error.

The Rosenblum family praised the DMV for the prompt response.

“I mean, I have to take my hat off to make them move so fast because that was just amazing,” said Neal Rosenblum. “I think in the end I felt a little confirmed. So, yes, it felt good. “

MORE NEWS: The Santa Clara shoe store was ransacked during a smash-and-grave robbery that night

“It’s kind of cool how fast they move because they’re known to be slow,” said Neal Rosenblum. “I think it’s important to stand by something you believe in. So if you believe in something strongly enough, you should fight for it. “

The post Gilroy Teen Fails Driving Take a look at Due To Tesla Regenerative Braking System – CBS San Francisco appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

The San Francisco 49ers will try to confuse the eyes of Arizona defenders on Sunday.

With pre-snap motions, checks and various personnel packages, the 49ers will try to find or open a gap in the front of the Cardinals.

With the potential hole, the 49ers have quick running backs to break through before they close, or they can pull the ball back and take game actions.

Arizona has dealt with this type of scheme before.

Kyle Shanahan took over as head coach and play-caller for San Francisco in 2017, so much of the Cardinals staff has faced him several times.

These two teams faced each other in Week 5, although the San Francisco offense looked different with replacement quarterback Trey Lance for the injured Jimmy Garoppolo.

“It’s a really difficult undertaking to overcome,” said Vance Joseph, Cardinals defensive coordinator. “Kyle did a few different turns with the jets and the moves and the slashes and the hardest part on defense is the pre-snap. The move and the pre-snap moves usually break up the defense and that’s the hardest part.

“So it is our job to obviously have great details and focus on our tasks before hitting the ball. And it is my job to avoid the gaps with the right decisions.”

On both of the above moves, moving forward confused a defender’s eyes and affected the first step / reaction.

This created just enough time for speedster running back Elijah Mitchell, who averages 5.3 yards per carry this season.

Security Budda Baker said he anticipated a lot of 12 and 21 personnel groupings.

Many of the moves the 49ers use include their tight ends and full-back Kyle Juszczyk.

The tricky thing is that they also use these players in the passing game, which makes it difficult to decipher what is coming. Juszczyk is third on the team at receptions this year, just behind tight end George Kittle, who missed three games but will return on Sunday.

“You will be moving a lot of people,” said edge rusher Markus Golden. “If your eyes are lost and you’re looking at a narrow end while it moves all the way across the field when you look at it, they’ll snap the ball and you’re too late to do your job. You just have to be able to concentrate on your job. “

Edge rusher Chandler Jones added, “When you have a lot of moves and pulls and guys are walking sideways, you need to keep an eye on your man on your assignment as he can change in a split second.

“Shanahan does a great job moving up the gaps, giving you different looks, or giving you the same looks and giving you different things with the same exact look. So our job as defense is that everyone has to do their job to stay in their loopholes. “

Joseph said it was difficult to face a team that doesn’t change offense much, even with bigger players in the game. Bigger players also need to maintain their discipline against sets they are not used to.

With Garoppolo, the 49ers have returned to their usual running game. When Lance was below the middle, the rookie had a lot more run-pass options and led the team in a rush in Week 5.

That won’t be the case on Sunday, although Garoppolo may pull it from time to time.

With the moving parts and big bodies up front, the 49ers are what Cardinals head coach Kliff Kingsbury called one of the most physical teams on the schedule.

The post San Francisco 49ers to Check Arizona Cardinals’ Eyes Defensively Sunday appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

About 200 employees at a major hospital in San Francisco and the University of California, San Francisco’s health system, most of them fully vaccinated, tested positive for the coronavirus this month and most had the highly contagious Delta variant, according to a hospital official.

Some of the cases were asymptomatic, most included mild to moderate symptoms, and two required hospitalization, officials said. The infections were found to be Delta-related because most of the samples in San Francisco were tested for the variant that is now prevalent in the city.

About 75 to 80 percent of the 50+ infected employees at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital are fully vaccinated, said Dr. Lukejohn Day, the hospital’s chief physician, in an interview on Saturday. The University of California, San Francisco, in a statement released Friday, said 153 of the 183 cases were reported in their hospitals, clinics and on campus was fully vaccinated. [Update: On Aug. 2, the university clarified that 146 of the cases were among staff members in its health system, and that 37 were among U.C.S.F. researchers, other university staff and students. It also reported that, of the two people hospitalized, one was vaccinated and the other was not.]

None of the infected San Francisco General staff members were hospitalized, and most had mild to moderate symptoms, said Dr. Day. The asymptomatic cases were discovered through contact tracing.

With no vaccinations, said Dr. Day, the hospitalization rate would be much worse.

“We’re worried right now that we’re seeing an increase here in San Francisco and the Bay Area,” said Dr. Day. “But what we’re seeing is exactly what the vaccine data showed us: you can still possibly get Covid. But when you get it, it’s not serious at all. “

On July 11, San Francisco ordered that workers in high-risk workplaces, including hospitals, should be vaccinated by September 15. This includes that all employees and trainees must adhere to the new UC system-wide Covid-19 vaccination mandate, with limited exceptions for medical or religious exceptions. ”

Staff at both hospitals continue to wear personal protective equipment, said Dr. Day. But the number of personal infections reported in July is about as high as it was during the height of the winter wave.

“We are nervous that we could possibly exceed it,” said Dr. Day.

The post 233 Workers at 2 San Francisco Hospitals Check Optimistic in July appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.