Waymo’s lovable and ungovernable driverless taxis aren’t playing by the rules again in San Francisco. Bystanders spotted a robotaxi driving down the wrong side of a city street. The robotaxi company claims its vehicle was avoiding a pack of unicyclists. While we can all agree that hitting a person should be avoided at all costs, deciding to drive on the opposite side of the road is just as dangerous.
Multiple videos of the incident were posted on reddit. The Waymo taxi approached the pack and pulled to the oncoming lane like it’s a typical maneuver in a bustling city as several vehicles go past in the opposite direction. A video featured one of the riders calling out to the robotaxi like it was a misbehaving pet: “Wrong way, Waymo. Waymo, you fool.” The driverless taxi only returns to the correct side of the street after a unicyclist pulls in front of the vehicle. To be fair, I don’t think the engineers could’ve predicted that its robotaxi would approach a pack of motorized unicycles.
Waymo claims its vehicle drove in the oncoming lane to avoid running someone over, according to Futurism:
Per the company, the cab “detected that there may be a risk of a person within that crowd who had fallen down, and decided to carefully initiate a passing maneuver when the opposing lane was clear to move around what could be an obstacle and a safety concern.”
Waymo is now taking the brunt of San Francisco’s opposition to driverless vehicles since Cruise pulled its fleet from service, including getting one of its cars torched earlier this year. In October 2023, a Cruise robotaxi struck a woman, dragged her 20 feet and pinned her to the ground. The incident was the most severe in a string of numerous high-profile malfunctions.
