In what appears to be a vehicle recall epidemic, the self-driving car service Waymo has issued a software recall after two of its vehicles collided with a tow truck in December.
A tow truck was pulling a pickup truck in Phoenix, Arizona when a Waymo vehicle’s camera sensor allegedly misjudged the truck’s location, causing the collision.
The truck continued driving and was hit a few minutes later by a second Waymo vehicle – there were no passengers in either Waymo vehicle at the time of the accident.
Waymo announced the recall in a blog post on Tuesday, repeatedly calling the incident a ‘rare event’ and said it had immediately started rolling out a software update to its entire fleet of autonomous vehicles.
Waymo issued a voluntary recall after two of its self-driving vehicles collided with the same two truck only minutes apart
The company said it reported the crashes to the Phoenix Police Department, the Arizona Department of Public Safety, and the NHTSA and conducted an internal review of the two incidents.
Waymo said: ‘Given our commitment to safety, our team went to work immediately to understand what happened.’
It reported that the pickup truck was allegedly being ‘improperly towed’ and was angled so it rested in between a center turn lane and a traffic lane on December 11, 2023.
Because the pickup truck was partially in a separate lane, Waymo’s AV software perceived the pickup truck and tow truck to be two separate vehicles, which caused the ride-share car to incorrectly predict which direction the tow truck was moving.
No one was hurt in the accident and the vehicles suffered minimal damage from the accident, the company reported.
Waymo’s recall included a software update to its entire fleet of autonomous vehicles between December and January
Waymo started accepting riders in early 2022, but self-driving companies have recently come under fire for accidents involving their autonomous vehicles, despite claims that they are potentially safer than human drivers.
A Waymo vehicle fatally struck a dog while in self-driving mode when a person was test driving the autonomous function in San Francisco in June 2023.
In July, a Waymo in Tempe, Arizona, caused a three-car pileup when it braked to avoid hitting a downed branch – there was one rider in the vehicle who sustained minor injuries.
In yet another incident, one of Waymo’s driverless vehicles struck a bicyclist last week after allegedly not seeing the person until it was too late.
Waymo AV uses light detection to create a 3D picture of what’s going on around the vehicle and uses lidar sensors to send millions of ‘laser pulses’ in all directions.
The amount of time it takes for a pulse to bounce off an object tells the vehicle how far away a person, car, sidewalk, or any other object is.
It also has 360-degree cameras that allow it to see in both daylight and low-light conditions to spot traffic lights, construction zones, and other objects from hundreds of meters away.
Waymo uses laser sensors, a radar, 360-degree camera, and an onboard computer to assess its surroundings
The vehicle’s radar detector provides information about another object’s distance and speed while its onboard computer collates all the data from the cameras and sensors in real-time to identify the different objects and plan the best route to its destination.
Waymo self-driving car in ‘autonomous mode’ with a test driver behind the wheel hits and kills dog in San Francisco
Waymo self-driving car in ‘autonomous mode’ with a test driver behind the wheel hits and kills dog in San Francisco
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After determining that its guidance system had malfunctioned, Waymo changed and updated its vehicle software on all its vehicles between December and January.
The company said it consulted with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) on four separate occasions and ultimately chose to issue a voluntary recall which serves as a notice to the public that it had deployed the update.
Waymo did not specify what the software update entails, but a spokesperson told Dailymail.com that it addressed the autonomous driving system’s error when it incorrectly predicted the future motion of the towed vehicle.
The company did not remove its self-driving vehicles from the road and said the recall has not affected its service.
‘This voluntary recall reflects how seriously we take our responsibility to safely deploy our technology and to transparently communicate with the public,’ Waymo said.
‘There are hundreds of recall reports submitted annually to NHTSA and we respect the importance of this road safety framework and our relevant legal obligations.’
Waymo declined Dailymail.com’s request for comment.
