DRIVERLESS CARS
WAYMO DRIVERLESS TAXI VANDALISED AND SET ON FIRE IN SAN FRANCISCO’S CHINATOWN
Authorities in California are working to
determine if the
destruction of a driverless taxi in an arson attack by a mob was the latest in a series of protests targeting autonomous vehicles. According to the San Francisco fire department, a group of people jumped on the EV in the city’s Chinatown district on the night of 10 February, smashing windows and spraying it with graffiti before setting it alight with a firework. Officials said the car, a Jaguar I- Pace operated by Waymo, Google’s self-driving car project,
was
unoccupied. “The vehicle was not transporting any riders and no injuries have been reported,” Waymo said in a statement. The attack follows a number of
driverless vehicles in San Francisco. Members realised quickly that placing a traffic cone on the bonnet interfered with sensors and placed it in “panic mode”, rendering it immobile. Protesters question the safety of the vehicles, operated in California
recent cases and protests involving AVs in California, a leading state for the driverless revolution with more than 9 million miles driven on public roads by test permit holders last year, according to its depart- ment of motor vehicles (DMV). A group called the Safe Street Rebels, has operated a campaign of disrupting and disabling
WAYMO, RECALLS SOFTWARE AFTER CRASHES IN PHOENIX
Waymo has voluntarily recalled its self-driving car software after two of its robotaxis hit a towed vehicle in Phoenix at the end of last year. The AV hit a backward-facing pickup truck “being improperly towed,” according to a blog post. After the initial hit, neither vehicle stopped moving, and a second Waymo car hit the towed truck a few minutes later. “Neither Waymo vehicle was transporting riders at the time, and this unusual scenario resulted in no injuries and minor vehicle damage,” Waymo chief safety officer Mauricio Peña wrote. “We determined that due to the persistent orientation mismatch of
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the towed pickup truck and tow truck combination, the Waymo AV incorrectly predicted the future motion of the towed vehicle,” Peña said. The company began updating the software on its fleet in late December and into 2024. After consulting with the The National Highway Traffic Safety Admin- istration, Waymo “concluded that it would be appropriate to submit a voluntary recall report of the software present on our fleet at the time of the two collisions.” There have been several crashes involving a Waymo autonomous vehicle and another car, many based in San Francisco.
almost exclusively by Waymo since Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors, saw its test permit suspended in October last year. Cruise was accused of trying to hide the severity of an incident in San Francisco in which a pedestrian was hit by a car, driven by a human driver, at a stoplight and flung into the path of a Cruise self-driving car, which then ran her over and stopped on top of her. The woman survived. Cruise withdrew its fleet of 950 vehicles after the California DMV said they posed “an unreasonable threat to public safety” and that the agency was investigating a number of other “concerning incidents” involving driverless cars. However, the safety record of Waymo’s driverless taxi service has also come into question. Last June, one of its vehicles killed a dog, and California’s automobile regulator launched an investi- gation recently after a Waymo car struck and injured a cyclist that was obscured from its sensors by another vehicle at an intersection. Police said they have not estab- lished whether the destruction of the Waymo car in Chinatown was linked to protests against AVs or the work of opportunist vandals.
MARCH 2024 PHTM
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