Minor crash for Waymo van
Waymo, formerly known as Google’s selfdriving car project, reported its latest minor traffic accident Monday — and for once, it didn’t involve a human driver rear-ending one of the company’s autonomous vehicles at a light.
Instead, the details of the incident, which happened while the Waymo minivan was under human control, make one wonder how well the car’s programming would have handled the same circumstances.
According to an accident report the company filed with the California Department of Motor Vehicles, the incident happened on Aug. 26 in Palo Alto, near the intersection of Alma Street and El Verano Avenue.
The Waymo vehicle, part of the company’s fleet of specially designed Chrysler Pacificas, was heading east in the left lane of Alma and operating in autonomous mode. As required by California law, a Waymo employee sat behind the wheel, ready to take over if needed.
A vehicle ahead of the minivan swerved to avoid an object in the road. The Waymo driver disengaged the autonomous driving system and steered right, into the next lane. In so doing, the van’s back fender scraped the front fender of a 2006 Odyssey. Both cars were traveling less than 30 mph, according to the report, and no one was injured.
The incident is interesting in that it’s an example of when the human driver for Waymo feels the need to disengage the autopilot. It could become a scenario that Waymo uses to teach its autonomous vehicles.