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AIAAIC-1344

Two Waymo robotaxis crash into pick-up truck

Two Waymo self-driving cars crashed into a pick-up truck being towed in Phoenix, Ariz ona, resulting in the company issuing a voluntary recall of its vehicles. According to Waymo, one of their cars ' incorrectly predicted the future motion', of a backward-facing pickup truck that was being 'improperly towed', and collided with it, causing no injuries and 'minor damage' to the car. A few minutes later another Waymo vehicle made contact with the same pickup while it was being towed in the same manner. Waymo later discovered that its software had incorrectly predicted the future movements of the pickup truck due to 'persistent orientation mismatch' between the towed vehicle and the one towing it. The company developed a fix for its software which it deployed to its fleet through a 'recall'. The incident highlighted safety concerns about Waymo and about the self-driving car industry. System 🤖 Waymo Driver Documents 📃 Waymo (2024). Voluntary recall of our previous software Developer: Waymo Country: USA Sector: Automotive Purpose: Automate steering, acceleration, braking Technology: Self-driving system; Computer vision Issue: Accuracy/reliability; Safety

Date it happened
2023-12-01
Organisation involved
Waymo
Product, system or model
Waymo Driver
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This incident was imported from AIAAIC and is used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Our additions to it — the structured fields, the translation, the checks against other reports — are published under the same licence.

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