Are robotaxis the future? Or instead, the past?
Are robotaxis the future? Or instead, the past?
The NTSB collision summary is out for the January 23, 2026 incident where a Waymo collided with a child. It is very unfortunate that Waymo continues to try to blame a child for problems with its robotaxis.
We already knew that remote operators were involved in driving Waymo "autonomous" vehicles. But this NTSB report provides a concrete example of the remote operator dangerously providing incorrect information, causing the Waymo robotaxi to pass by a stopped school bus. Credit goes to Phil Koopman for calling out this problem.
Waymo was stuck until an actual human could fully shut the door of the vehicle. Given that Waymo support can be all the way in the Philippines, they had to resort to getting a DoorDasher to do it.
Waymo announces in their blog that they have raised another $16 billion and are now valued at $126 billion. Given they have a hopelessly money losing venture it is a shame that the money couldn't be spent on street safety infrastructure instead and actually make a difference.
Fun!
Waymo does it again. A whole flotilla of them managed to block quite a large intersection. This occurred because they still do not "know" how to handle traffic signal outages.
