Waymo Robotaxis Often Fail to Stop for Pedestrians

In a piece for The Washington Post, Geoffrey A. Fowler describes his experience as a pedestrian in San Francisco, where autonomous Waymo taxis are failing to stop for pedestrians in crosswalks.

“When I try to cross my street at a marked crosswalk, the Waymo robotaxis often wouldn’t yield to me. I would step out into the white-striped pavement, look at the Waymo, wait to see whether it’s going to stop — and the car would zip right past,” Fowler writes. In a week, he recorded over a dozen Waymo vehicles that failed to stop when he was crossing a street. Waymo representatives told Fowler that the cars’ software tries to predict whether a pedestrian will really cross. “It’s classic Silicon Valley hubris to assume Waymo’s ability to predict my behavior supersedes a law designed to protect me.”

It is a cautionary tale about how AI, intended to make us more safe, also needs to learn how to coexist with us. The experience has taught my family that the safest place around an autonomous vehicle is inside it, not walking around it.

While human drivers who don’t yield to pedestrians face the risk of a ticket or even jail time, “In California, a computer driver can’t even get a meaningful traffic ticket yet and is certainly not worried about going to jail.” Fowler also notes that cities can empower pedestrians with more safety measures such as flashing lights and signage at crosswalks.