Rollout of Waymo’s self-driving taxis in LA is paused due to ‘very real public safety concerns’ after two crashes within minutes of each other – and one fire
Los Angeles won’t get self-driving taxis just yet.
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has halted self-driving car company Waymo’s plans to expand its autonomous taxi service in the state.
The announcement comes a week after Waymo admitted that not one but two of its self-driving taxis crashed into the same truck in Arizona in December.
Waymo, owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, has had fully autonomous taxis in San Francisco since 2022, alongside competitor Cruise.
The company had applied for permission to deploy its fleet of self-driving taxis outside San Francisco in the Bay Area and in Los Angeles.
But as of Wednesday, the CPUC has suspended that plan for at least 120 days.
Johan Forssell, Sweden’s Minister of International Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade, took a ride in a fully autonomous Waymo taxi in San Francisco on Tuesday. The next day, California regulators rejected the company’s expansion plan.
A series of cameras on the outside of Waymo’s autonomous taxis are intended to prevent accidents. But at least two have been involved in accidents recently.
“Since Waymo halted all meaningful discussions about its expansion plans into Silicon Valley, the CPUC has put the brakes on its application to test robotaxi services with near-unfettered access in both San Mateo and Los Angeles counties,” the council’s vice president of San Mateo David Supervisors David J. Canepa told television station KTVU in a statement.
“This provides an opportunity to fully engage the autonomous vehicle manufacturer in addressing our very real public safety concerns, which have caused all kinds of dangerous situations for firefighters and police in neighboring San Francisco.”
The company said no one was in the cars at the time of the crash in Arizona in December.
The cars’ camera sensors are said to have misjudged the truck’s location twice.
Waymo issued a recall last week when it announced the findings in a blog post.
The company blamed the tow truck because the towed pickup was not properly secured.
Another Waymo car, this one with a driver behind the wheel but in autonomous mode, killed a dog last June.
In the first quarter of 2023, there were 87 traffic incidents involving Waymo and Cruise, owned by General Motors.
And earlier this month, during Lunar New Year celebrations, San Franciscans set fire to a Waymo taxi with fireworks.
The self-driving car was ‘confused’ by the revelers’ fireworks and came to a stop in the middle of the road, where it refused to budge.
Locals set this Waymo Jaguar on fire during San Francisco’s Lunar New Year celebration on February 10
The car came to a stop and blocked the road after being ‘confused’ by fireworks. The windows were smashed and fireworks were thrown inside
An angry mob set the car on fire.
No one was inside when a rowdy crowd of people smashed the front window before someone threw fireworks inside.
The incident was partly a senseless act of vandalism, but also highlighted the city’s simmering hostility toward autonomous vehicles, which many locals say were deployed before they were safe.
Leaders from San Mateo and San Francisco, including Canepa, wrote letters of protest to the CPUC last week after learning that Waymo planned to expand its coverage.
A similar suspension occurred before Waymo was finally allowed to launch in San Francisco, so this may not be the end of the saga.
On February 7, an unmanned taxi from Waymo hit a cyclist in San Francisco.