Oops, I thought Waymos weren’t supposed to interfere with transit.
Just as Waymos are supposed to start providing service on “car-free” transit-oriented Market Street in San Francisco, one of those clankers done got into a beef with a bus! Though damage was likely minimal, the poor driving skills of the Waymo completely shut down the 19-Polk bus line for quite a while.
Though at least the tourists appreciated this only in San Francisco moment:
This incident happened at Larkin & Beach Streets. Note that this is a stop sign controlled intersection, which should make it quite safe.
From the above video that the bus had almost made it fully into the intersection, executing a left turn. From the angle of the Waymo you can tell it was turning right.
Most likely scenario
The Waymo certainly detected the quite obvious bus moving into the intersection in order to turn right. But the Waymo driving system likely did not appreciate the combination that the bus was turning left and that it was going to take up significant space in order to do so. Therefore the Waymo wrongly though it could proceed, even though a human driver would have waited the extra couple of seconds. And to compound the serious misjudgment of the Waymo driving system, it didn’t back up out of danger, again, as a human driver would have done.
Key problem is that when things like this go wrong for a Waymo there is no backup. Instead, the car simply stops in order to be “safe”. But this is the wrong kind of behavior. The car should have backed up a couple of inches and then no collision would have occurred. And it should be noted that Waymo has human tele-operators who can intervene. But this is an ineffective solution because it takes too long for a remove human to understand the situation and intervene correctly.
Do other AV systems work any better?
No! Cruise vehicles had the same exact intractable problem, as shown by this collision with a truck.
