Waymo car stops in middle of Market St during hectic rainstorm
During yesterday’s rainstorm, footage showed a Waymo autonomous taxi stop in the middle of Market St. Here, its left light flashed as other cars struggled to pass it during busy traffic. Unfortunately for Waymo, this isn’t the first time that one of its driverless cars has malfunctioned.
Video footage of this incident quickly spread on social media with some speculating that it could be due to rainwater or even steam from the water droplets. However, it should be noted that these are just speculative theories at this point. Furthermore, as these cars sometimes stop irrespective of the weather, it looks like this could be a stretch rather than a realistic theory.
Typically, this results in a call from Remote Assistance Dispatch which then tells the Waymo car to ignore any potentially invasive signals and continue its journey. As a result, in this case, the car did eventually get moving again.
Nonetheless, this may not have been a memorable drive for the customer. However, this is arguably the price of implementing new technology.
Despite these occasional stops, Waymo’s self-driving cars are designed to operate as smoothly and safely as possible, using their sophisticated technology to navigate the roads with precision and accuracy. Regardless, as far as PR is concerned, this may be a video for Waymo to forget.
