Google’s self-driving car outfit, Waymo, is recalling about 3,800 of its autonomous cars in the United States over a software issue that could allow vehicles to drive into flooded roads.
Report has it that Waymo is taking off all its 3,791 cars in its fifth and sixth-generation Automated Driving Systems (ADS) before they potentially injure passengers.
According to a letter posted on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) website last week, the voluntary recall affects nearly 3,800 robotaxis that use the company’s fifth and sixth generation automated driving systems.
The decision follows an incident on April 20 in San Antonio, Texas, where an empty Waymo vehicle entered a flooded road and was swept into a creek.
According to the BBC, the company, which hopes to operate a robotaxi service in London by September, said safety was its “primary priority” and it was working on “additional software safeguards”.
A spokesperson of the company, which is owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, added “mitigations” had already been put in place, such as “limiting access to areas where flash flooding might occur”.
Waymo’s San Antonio service also remains temporarily suspended following the incident, though the company said it will resume public rides after the necessary software fix had been rolled out. Waymo says it now provides more than 500,000 trips per week across multiple US cities including San Francisco, Austin and Miami.
A professor of Science and Technology Policy at University College London, Jack Stilgoe, told the BBC that all self-driving car systems had limits on when and where they could operate safely. “We often see these limits only when something goes wrong,” he said.
Waymo says it now provides more than 500,000 trips per week across multiple US cities As more autonomous vehicles are deployed, Prof Stilgoe said, more such problems are likely to emerge. “That isn’t to say the technology won’t be hugely beneficial,” he added.
“But policymakers would prefer to know about these things in advance rather than discovering them in hindsight.”
