Waymo is pulling the software that runs its robotaxi fleet because, in December, two of them crashed into the same towed pickup truck in Phoenix, Arizona. It’s the first recall for the business.
In a blog post, Waymo’s top safety officer, Mauricio Peña, called the accidents “minor” and said that neither car was carrying anyone at the time. It did not hurt anyone. Also, he said that Waymo’s ride-hailing service, which is live in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin, “is not and has not been interrupted by this update.” The company wouldn’t give TechCrunch photos of the crashes.
The company said it fixed the software and began sending it to its fleet on December 20 after testing and confirming it worked. By January 12, all of its robotaxis had that software update.
“This voluntary recall shows how seriously we take our duty to use our technology safely and to communicate openly with the public,” Peña wrote.
The recall comes at a time when self-driving cars are getting a lot of attention after a string of high-profile accidents and scandals, such as last week’s accident involving a Waymo robotaxi and a rider. An driverless Waymo car was damaged and set on fire by a group of people in San Francisco over the weekend. Cruise, a competitor, has shut down while it deals with the effects of a crash that happened last October. This week, it hired its first chief safety officer.
Both of the crashes that led to the recall happened on December 11. A Peña wrote that one of Waymo’s cars saw a pickup truck looking backwards being “improperly towed.” It was “persistently angled across a centre turn lane and a traffic lane.” Peña said that the robotaxi “wrongly predicted the future motion of the towed vehicle” because the tow truck and pickup were not facing the same way, and they hit each other. The company told TechCrunch that this only did minor damage to the left front plate.
Peña said that the tow truck didn’t stop, and a short time later, another Waymo robotaxi hit the same pickup truck that was being pulled. The company told TechCrunch that this hurt the front left plate and a sensor in a small way. (The tow truck came to a stop after the second accident.)
On the day of the crashes, Waymo said it called the Phoenix Police Department and the Arizona Department of Public Safety. On December 15, it told the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration about the wrecks. There were “four subsequent conversations” between the company and NHTSA staff about the crashes before Waymo chose to recall the software that was being used at the time.
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People, towns, and government agencies are all looking closely at the promise of self-driving car fleets, and the recall could make things worse for Waymo. In Los Angeles, Robotaxis are already getting pushback, even from the Teamsters union. The California Department of Motor Vehicles is already looking into the accident between Waymo and the rider. The Department of Justice, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and other groups are also looking into how Cruise handled the crash in October.
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