The Waymo logo is displayed on a self-driving vehicle at the Google I/O 2018 Conference at Shoreline Amphitheater on May 8, 2018, in Mountain View, California. Photo by Justin Sullivan || Getty Images
JEROD MACDONALD-EVOY
Arizona Mirror
Last month, a traffic jam clogged up the streets of Downtown Phoenix during “First Friday,” and Phoenix police officers worked to shuffle the stuck vehicles out of the way, but there was a problem: No one was behind the wheel of the dozen cars causing the gridlock.
It was a likely first of its kind, a slew of driverless white Waymo Jaguars were all stopped in the same place at the same time along Roosevelt Street in Downtown Phoenix.
“There are 12 Waymos that don’t know what to do and the cops say they can’t tell them where to go,” an unidentified person says in a video posted to TikTok of the incident.
The incident happened at around 8 p.m. on April 7 at First Street and Roosevelt, according to a Waymo spokesperson.
“As safety is central to our mission, our autonomous driving technology prioritizes the safest driving path with the information it has at any given moment. Sometimes, that means our vehicle will pull over or come to a stop if it’s assessed to be the safest course of action in that instance, as happened here,” Waymo said in a statement about the incident. “We identified the software that contributed to this situation and made appropriate updates across our fleet within 24 hours.”
But the incident also raises other questions about the Waymo fleet that has been operating on Phoenix streets.
The most recent report from the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration listed 12 crashes involving Waymos in the state since July 2021, mainly with the Chrysler Pacifica model of the vehicle. No injuries were reported in any of the accidents.
The specific model involved in the April 7 incident has been part of Waymo’s fully autonomous taxi service, which can be hailed via an app downloaded to a user’s smartphone. The Arizona Mirror inquired if the jam could have been caused by a user or users calling too many of the vehicles at once, either by accident or for nefarious reasons, and was told that the company prevents this from occurring.
“This incident was not a result of too many people ordering cars to the same location, as it was caused by software that has since been addressed,” a Waymo spokesperson said. “Under normal operations, our vehicles would look for the most appropriate place to park while waiting for riders to enter the vehicle and start the trip.”
But what about nefarious actors?
