Waymo responds to safety concerns amid investigation into incidents caught on school bus cameras
Communities are sounding the alarm over close calls with autonomous vehicles, including one school district in Texas that has asked Waymo to pull its driverless cars off the road during school pick-up and drop-off following a series of safety scares.
On its website, Waymo says it aims to serve as "the world's most trusted driver," but recent video footage of Waymo vehicles illegally passing stopped school buses with red lights flashing, arms extended and filled with children, has highlighted a growing concern.
The incidents were recorded by cameras mounted on school buses from the Austin Independent School District and have prompted an investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
According to school district officials, there have been at least 19 separate instances of Waymo vehicles passing stopped school buses since the school year began in August.
"We've noticed a consistent -- I mean every week there seems to be just a few more [incidents]," AISD Assistant Police Chief Travis Pickford told ABC News. "Until the problem is fixed, you know, they don't need to be operating on our roadways."
Waymo told ABC News the incidents were the result of a software issue.
"Improving road safety is our top priority at Waymo and we're deeply invested in safe interaction with school buses," a representative for the company said in a statement. "We swiftly implemented software updates to address this and will continue to rapidly improve."
Vishay Nihalani, director of product management operations for Waymo, told ABC News, "I don't think people should expect perfection."
"What's really important, though, is that we're learning from all the different scenarios that we encounter," he continued.
In response to the specific incidents in Austin, Nihalani said "just operating safely isn't enough," adding, "We need to make sure that we're following the rules of the road, and after identifying that situation, we've already analyzed the situation and implemented fixes so that such situations are much less likely to occur in the future."
Other Waymo passengers and social media users have shared videos of various experiences they said they encountered with the autonomous car service, including being trapped inside with no way to get out.
In Arizona, one such video showed a passenger on his way to the Phoenix Airport trapped inside a Waymo that was driving in circles in a parking lot. The car eventually came to a stop after several minutes, the man said, and he was able to exit the vehicle. Waymo later said the issue was addressed and fixed in "a regularly scheduled software update."
Waymo says safety is its priority and claims that its driverless cars have a much lower crash rate than human drivers. Compared to human drivers, the company says, Waymo cars are involved in 91% fewer crashes that result in serious injury or worse.
Experts from the Association for Computing Machinery, a nonprofit scientific organization dedicated to addressing challenges in computing, warns that "regulators should not assume that fully automated vehicles will necessarily reduce road injuries and fatalities," adding in a 2024 policy brief, "It is unclear that fully automated vehicles will be able to operate safely without a human driver’s attention, except on limited roadways and under controlled conditions."
