#waymo

#waymo

For months, Tesla's robotaxis in Austin and San Francisco have included safety monitors with access to a kill switch in case of emergency - a fallback that Waymo currently doesn't need for its commercial robotaxi service. The safety monitor sits in the passenger seat in Austin, and in the driver seat in San Francisco. Neither service is fully open to the public yet, relying instead on customer waitlists.

The trapped passenger was discovered near MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, when a woman ordered a Waymo for her daughter near the corner of South Westlake Avenue and 6th Street on Monday afternoon only to discover the vehicle already had a passenger when it arrived - in the trunk. "This s- won't let me out," the man said, when asked why he was back there.

A Los Angeles woman made a curious discovery when trying to put her daughter in a Waymo, which was a man hiding in the vehicle's trunk, bringing up serious questions about how easy it is to just hop inside a Waymo and hide there. As the self-driving robotaxi company Waymo expands to other cities like Los Angeles, it seems we are going to start seeing more viral videos of bizarre Waymo incidents coming from cities other than just San Francisco.

There have certainly been some bumps for the self-driving robotaxis of Waymo in recent weeks. In late October, a Waymo ran over and killed a beloved bodega cat. Then last week in the Western Addition, a Waymo ran over and killed a dog. Top that off with an incident in Los Angeles that came to light last week where a Waymo drove through an active crime scene during a police standoff, apparently not realizing what the flashing police sirens are for.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has asked Waymo for more information about its self-driving system and operations following reports from the Austin School District that its robotaxis illegally passed school buses 19 times this year. In a December 3 letter sent to Waymo, regulators requested detailed information about its fifth-generation self-driving system and operations. Reuters was the first to report on the letter, which comes two months since the agency opened an investigation into Waymo over how its robotaxis perform around stopped school buses.

The pilot began in August, and includes Uber and Lyft Black commercial vehicles. While the Better Market Street plan required approval by the Board, the Mayor sidestepped the Board's authority by authorizing these ride-hail services to drive on Market Street by taking advantage of a loophole that permits commercially-plated vehicles to drive on the street, an exception originally intended for commercial delivery vehicles serving businesses on the street.

On a new section of its website, Tesla claims that in North America, owners using the company's Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software are driving around 5 million miles before a major collision, and around 1.5 million miles before a minor collision. That's a far lower rate than the national average based on statistics provided by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). That data shows people get in a major collision every 699,000 miles, and a minor one every 229,000, at least according to Tesla's interpretation.

Back in August, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Waymo can't drive on highways because of the mix of sensors on the Alphabet company's robotaxis. Waymo's fifth-generation autonomous driving platform has five lidars, six radar sensors, and 29 cameras. It's this mix of lidar, radar, and cameras, Musk wrote on X, that leads to "sensor contention" in which the information from the lidar and radars "disagree" with the cameras.

In a first for the U.S., Waymo on Nov. 12 will start offering driverless robot-taxi rides on freeways in the Bay Area, along with Los Angeles and Phoenix. The pioneering Google spinoff will also expand service down the Peninsula all the way into San Jose, and serve riders to and from Mineta San Jose International Airport, creating broad new trip-taking opportunities for residents and visitors. A map showing robotaxi company Waymo's expanded service zone in the Bay Area.