Are robotaxis the future? Or instead, the past?
Are robotaxis the future? Or instead, the past?
Waymo is fortunate to have a better reputation than the rest, but their incident rate is still not acceptable…
SF Chronicle reports that Waymos aren't content to have seriously injured a bicyclist in San Francisco due to not following the traffic laws. Now they appear to park in bike lanes in a regular basis.
SF Standard reports on yet more problems that Waymos are causing in San Francisco. Now they are clogging up residential parking garages as well.
StreetsBlog USA covers a report that confirms that Waymos spend half their time empty, as in "zero occupancy vehicles", as in the absolute worst from a congestion and energy point of view.
CNN investigated the safety of Waymo robotaxis and found that while in some ways they drive more safely than humans, in other ways they introduce whole new safety problems.
SF Chronicle reports that there is a new use case for robotaxis: burglary! No driver to identify the perpetrator. Truly brilliant!
NY Times writes an unfortunate article that perpetuates the Waymo marketing "crip-washing" that robotaxis are important for people who are visually impaired.
NY Times reports on how Waymo robotaxis do really dumb things when encountering flooded streets. They drive in and any passengers are then stuck!
SF Standard reports that once again Waymo offers service and then has to rescind it because it wasn't at all safe. This time it turns out that Waymos have been suspended from all freeways and from any flooded roadways. Sure would have been nice if they knew of these problems before inflicting them onto the public.
Findings provides a report on how half the Waymo miles are void of passengers, simply increasing congestion.
SF Chronicle reports on some serious problems with Waymo customer service.
SF Chronicle conducted a poll and found that only 42% consider the robotaxis to be a "good thing". Meanwhile, Brad Templeton does a really weird and inappropriate comparison to acceptance of elevators.
The San Antonio Express News reports that Waymo vehicles were programmed to drive onto flooded roads. This poor decision caused one of the Waymo vehicles to wash downstream. Now Waymo is updating the software on all their 3,800 vehicles to avoid this really stupid idea.
Wired reports that Waymo is finally trying to address the problem of violating the law by providing service to unaccomanied minors. Though they should have dealt with this months ago when they first clearly knew about this problem.
SF Gate reports on how Mayor Lurie's bending of the laws and allowing Waymo vehicles on car-free Market Street has completely backfired. A year later Waymo is not providing service on Market Street because there are no adequate locations to drop off or pick up passengers. Instead, Market Street is now plagued by car drivers who wrongly think that all cars are now allowed on the "car-free" portion.
NBC Bay Area reports that a passenger took a Waymo robotaxi to the San Jose airport but then absconded with his luggage. Waymo then made it quite difficult to get the luggage back, even though it was completely their fault.
