Waymo, the autonomous ride-hailing firm that launched its providers in Los Angeles late final yr, is recalling greater than 1,200 autos attributable to a software program defect, the Nationwide Freeway Visitors Security Administration stated Wednesday.
The recall comes after a sequence of minor crashes with gates, chains and different obstacles within the street that didn’t end in any accidents, the Mountain View, Calif.-based firm stated in a submitting with the NHTSA. The recall applies to 1,212 driverless autos working on Waymo’s fifth-generation automated driving software program.
Waymo launched a software program replace to resolve the difficulty, and that replace has already been rolled out in all affected autos, the recall discover stated.
The corporate operates greater than 1,500 autos throughout Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix and Austin. The recall doesn’t have an effect on any autos at present on the street, stated Waymo spokesperson Ethan Teicher.
Self-driving autos have come underneath elevated scrutiny following a number of points with Tesla’s autonomous know-how and a 2023 incident during which a pedestrian was significantly injured by a Cruise car.
The NHTSA opened an investigation into Waymo in Could 2024 after receiving stories of twenty-two incidents involving the fifth-generation software program. The company stated a number of incidents underneath investigation “concerned collisions with clearly seen objects {that a} competent driver could be anticipated to keep away from.” The investigation stays open.
In February 2024, Waymo recalled 444 autos after two minor collisions in Arizona. Though incidents involving Waymo autos generate consideration, the autos are safer than human drivers, in keeping with information collected by insurer Swiss Re.
Based mostly on information collected by Waymo, their driverless autos had 81% fewer airbag deployment crashes, 78% fewer injury-causing crashes and 62% fewer police-reported crashes than conventional autos driving the identical distance. Waymo autos depend on cameras, sensors and a sort of laser radar known as lidar to function autonomously.
“Waymo supplies greater than 250,000 paid journeys each week in a number of the most difficult driving environments within the U.S.,” Teicher stated. “Our file of decreasing accidents over tens of hundreds of thousands of totally autonomous miles pushed reveals our know-how is making roads safer.”
Operated by Google’s mum or dad firm, Alphabet, Waymo put its first autonomous car on the street in 2015. It launched its driverless ride-hailing service often called Waymo One in 2020, and has plans to increase to Atlanta, Miami and Washington, D.C., subsequent yr.
