EMS and Waymo officials confirmed that a Waymo robotaxi blocked an ambulance responding to the scene of a mass shooting in Austin, Texas, on Sunday.
“While our crews were responding to this morning’s shooting, an unmanned vehicle was stopped in the area, and it briefly interfered with access for an ambulance,” said Austin-Travis County EMS spokesperson Christa Stedman. told Axios. “The officer in the video followed established protocols to address the situation and was able to quickly move the vehicle so ATCEMS units could proceed.”
Google-owned Waymo told the outlets That it will not provide a statement.
In footage of the incident When broadcast online, a Waymo cab is seen spanning the width of a road, blocking an EMS vehicle from passing with its lights on. Instead of clearing the way, the cab staggers in place, before the ambulance driver decides to back off and take a different route. After several minutes of indecision – perhaps while it waited for a foreign security driver to provide guidance – the robotaxi eventually pulled off the road and into a parking garage.
“come on!” At one point a viewer is heard calling for a driverless car. “Go!”
Waymo has been facing a bad PR situation in recent months, and this latest mistake will only raise additional questions about the ability of robotaxis to react to unexpected road scenarios that are outside their normal training, especially when Waymo is considered a leader in the autonomous vehicle field.
In December, dozens of Waymo vehicles in San Francisco broke down during a citywide power outage, blocking roads and causing vehicles to pile up at intersections with no traffic lights.
Additional controversy is growing over reports of Waymo robotaxis blowing up stopped school buses while children were disembarking. Both the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board have launched separate investigations into dozens of reported violations. Less than a week after the NTSB announced its investigation, Waymo acknowledged that one of its cars struck and injured a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica, California.
This latest incident is also not the first time robotaxis have interfered with law enforcement. Last year, one of them was seen burning during an active police standoff. Others have forced the police to pull them over for driving erratically.
Wayward Waymos are apparently such a big issue that first responders are trained how to respond to them. (Waymo pays for this trainingIn fact.)
“This is the type of scenario that we prepare for,” Steadman said. AxiosSaying it was “quickly resolved without any significant impact on patient care or overall response operations.”
More information on self-driving cars: Here’s how many remote operators Waymo has per self-driving taxi
