All posts tagged: driverless cars

A Waymo nearly hit me, but I’m still optimistic about driverless cars

A Waymo nearly hit me, but I’m still optimistic about driverless cars

Published by skeptic

Waymo driverless cars are in London, but is this a positive move for road safety? Richard Baker/In Pictures via Getty images Waymo’s driverless cars have been rolling through London for months, although they aren’t taking passengers yet and a human sits ready to seize control if needed. Every time I’ve encountered them, they have seemed cautious and predictable. But recently, I had a near miss. I was circling a roundabout as I cycled home from work and a Waymo was about to pull onto it in front of me. I had priority, but it didn’t seem to be slowing and looked to be heading straight for me, then suddenly stopped. It wasn’t the scariest incident I’ve had on a bike – it wasn’t even the worst one that day. I didn’t feel in serious danger; I had seen it happening and was ready. The incident only stood out among the dozens of tense moments that happen on every commute because it was AI behind the wheel, not a person. Out of curiosity, I sent Waymo …

Emergency First Responders Say Waymos Are Getting Worse

Emergency First Responders Say Waymos Are Getting Worse

Published by skeptic

Emergency first responder leaders told federal regulators in a private meeting last month that they were frustrated with the performance of autonomous vehicles on their streets—that city firefighters, police officers, EMTs, and paramedics are forced to spend time during emergencies resolving issues with frozen or stuck cars. One fire official called them “a safety issue for our crews as well as the victims.” WIRED obtained an audio recording of the meeting. Officials from San Francisco and Austin, where Waymo has been ferrying passengers without drivers for more than a year, said the vehicles’ performance is getting worse. “We are actually seeing something interesting: backsliding of some things that had improved upon,” Mary Ellen Carroll, the executive director of San Francisco’s Department of Emergency Management, told officials with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which oversees self-driving vehicle safety in the US. “They are committing more traffic violations.” “We’ve seen some behavior we haven’t seen in a few years. … Waymo is frequently now blocking our fire stations from access,” added Chief Patrick Rabbitt, the …

Waymo ‘driverless’ taxi ploughs into London crime scene after double stabbing

Waymo ‘driverless’ taxi ploughs into London crime scene after double stabbing

Published by Sam Flores

A Waymo “driverless” taxi drove into a crime scene in west London as it was being tested on the streets of the capital. Dramatic video posted on TikTok shows the moment the vehicle careers into a police cordon in Harlesden as officers investigate a double stabbing. The white car – which is designed to be full autonomous – can be seen crashing into the crime scene, seemingly oblivious of a police vehicle’s flashing lights and siren and ‘Do Not Cross’ tape stretched across the road. After the car brakes sharply to a stop, two police officers are seen engaging in conversation with a person sitting in the car before it reverses away. A spokesman for Waymo told the Daily Mail the car was being manually driven at the time – and that the driver involved had been suspended. He said “initial analysis suggests” the car would have identified the danger and stopped had it been in automated mode. The firm added: “We sincerely apologise for any disruption caused by this validation driver, who was operating …

Tesla Says Its Robotaxis Are Sometimes Driven by Remote Humans

Tesla Says Its Robotaxis Are Sometimes Driven by Remote Humans

Published by skeptic

A series of letters sent by autonomous-vehicle (AV) developers to Democratic US senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts sheds the most light yet on the human side of robot vehicle operations. In the documents, submitted to Markey as part of an investigation into self-driving-vehicle technology and released on Tuesday, seven companies, including Tesla, Amazon-owned Zoox, and Uber- and Nvidia-funded Nuro, released new details about their “remote assistance” programs. All the companies that responded to the senator’s office say they use remote assistants—humans charged with responding to autonomous vehicles when they get confused, stuck, or in emergencies. The programs, experts say, are an important part of any autonomous vehicle company’s safety considerations, a backstop for a technology that’s becoming safer by the year but will continue to run into new situations on the road indefinitely. In a report also released Tuesday, Senator Markey said the new details were not enough. “Every autonomous-vehicle company refused to disclose how often their AVs require assistance from [remote assistants]—hiding key information from the public about their AV’s true level of autonomy,” …

Waymo raises B to scale robotaxi fleet internationally

Waymo raises $16B to scale robotaxi fleet internationally

Published by skeptic

Waymo, the Alphabet-owned autonomous vehicle company, has raised $16 billion as it plans to grow its fleet of driverless taxicabs this year to more than a dozen new cities internationally, including London and Tokyo. Dragoneer Investment Group, DST Global, and Sequoia Capital led the funding round, which now values Waymo at $126 billion, the company said in a blog post Monday. Parent company Alphabet supported the round and maintained its position as majority investor. The round also included significant investments from Andreessen Horowitz and Mubadala Capital, as well as Bessemer Venture Partners, Silver Lake, Tiger Global, and T. Rowe Price. Additional investors included BDT & MSD Partners, CapitalG, Fidelity Management & Research Company, GV, Kleiner Perkins, Perry Creek Capital, and Temasek. Waymo said the funds will be used to fuel its growth, which has accelerated over the past year and doesn’t appear to be slowing. The company recently secured rides to and from San Francisco International Airport and has expanded its robotaxi service throughout Northern California and several major metropolitan areas in the U.S., including …