Waymo remembers all autos after robotaxi-telephone pole crash

Final month, a self-driving Waymo taxi collided with a phone pole in Phoenix, Arizona. Fortunately, the driverless automotive was on the way in which to choose up a passenger and the automobile was unoccupied on the time of the accident. The robotaxi was broken however no people have been injured.

Nonetheless, this incident from Might led to Waymo issuing a voluntary recall of its whole fleet of 672 autonomous autos. The Verge says that Waymo is submitting the recall with the Nationwide Freeway Site visitors Security Administration (NHTSA) and a software program replace has been issued to all the autos.

In response to The Verge’s report, Waymo’s recall was not carried out with an over-the-air replace as has develop into widespread with firms like Tesla. The software program replace was put in in autos by engineers at Waymo’s central depot.

Waymo’s second recall of 2024

This marks Waymo’s second recall in a span of simply months.

Earlier this yr, the corporate introduced a voluntary recall of its whole fleet, which then consisted of 444 autos, after a set of accidents involving Waymo’s driverless autos.

In December 2023, two Waymo taxis hit the identical pickup truck that was within the midst of being towed. The accidents occurred inside minutes of one another. No accidents have been reported. Like the newest incident, these accidents additionally occurred in Phoenix. Waymo addressed the difficulty by way of a software program replace that was accomplished in January. Waymo introduced the recall in February and attributed the issue to a software program error.

The NHTSA shared final month that it was investigating Waymo, which is owned by Google’s mum or dad firm Alphabet, over security considerations concerning the driverless vehicles working on public roads. The federal authorities presently doesn’t have a particular algorithm for self-driving vehicles. Requirements that do exist have principally been enacted on the state degree. 

Nonetheless, the NHTSA does require that self-driving automotive firms disclose crashes to the company. As of final month, Waymo had reported 22 incidents the place the corporate’s autonomous vehicles have been “the only automobile operated throughout a collision” or “exhibited driving conduct that probably violated visitors security legal guidelines.” Of these incidents, 17 of them concerned a crash.

Waymo is not the one driverless automobile firm going through scrutiny from the NHTSA both. The company can also be presently investigating Amazon’s Zoox in addition to evaluating points associated to Tesla and Ford’s self-driving know-how.