An Austin resident captured footage of an autonomous vehicle operated by Google sister company Waymo driving the wrong way on a one-way highway access road in the downtown area of the city, in the latest blunder involving one of the company’s driverless cars.
The person, using the handle hellofromaustin, shared footage of the incident on Reddit that was captured by his wife while he said they were on their way to work on the morning of 15 December.
“Just another day in Austin,” the user wrote in a post that gained hundreds of comments.
Passing school buses
Waymo said safety is its highest priority and that it is improving from experience.
The company has shared similar comments following similar incidents in recent weeks, including dozens of cases in which Waymo vehicles illegally passed school buses in Georgia and Austin while they were loading and unloading students.
The 20th such incident since the beginning of the school year was captured by Austin Independent School District on 1 December.
Following this, district officials met with the Google sister company on 4 December and reiterated a demand that the vehicles cease operating during periods when students are loading and unloading from school buses across the city.
“The company disagreed with our risk assessment and refused to cease operations,” the district said in a statement.
It said it believed its ongoing software updates were having a meaningful effect on the behavior of the cars’ inability to understand that they must not pass a school bus while it is loading or unloading students.
The City of Austin has recorded 123 incidents involving autonomous vehicles this year, of which all but three involved Waymo vehicles.
More than 100 incidents this year
Some 46 of these, or about 37 percent of the total, involved safety concerns, followed by 22 incidents of violating rules involving school buses.
The city said Waymo cars have also been involved so far this year in 20 incidents of blocking traffic, 17 incidents of causing a nuisance, 10 incidents of ignoring police directions, five near-misses, and three collisions.
A Waymo car was also recently filmed driving through an intersection where armed police were arresting a driver.
Waymo said it intended to “rapidly improve” by issuing software updates.
The company has been expanding aggressively in the US this year as it seeks to boost revenues from its business, and is currently seeking to raise more than $15bn from parent company Alphabet as well as external investors at a valuation of up to $110bn, the Financial Times reported.
