More Driverless Car Shenanigans

Apparently We Have A Theme This Week

Today there are two separate news stories about driverless cars, though this time it seems to be defects in programming as opposed to a hack like we saw yesterday.  There are only a handful reported incidents, but the number of cars is also low so the percentages are not great.   The first involves Zoox-powered Toyota Highlanders developing a distaste for motorcycles.  Apparently there are 500 Zoox cars out on the road and two of them decided to suddenly brake when they detected a motorcycle behind them, causing the motorcyclist to crash into the rear of the SUV.  In one of the cases this resulted in injuries, on both cases the vehicles sustained damage.

The second story reveals that Waymo driverless cars are crashing into parked cars as well as randomly drifting into oncoming traffic.  This “unexpected behaviour” has been reported 22 times, though the actual number of incidents is likely higher.   Of those 22 reported incidents, 17 of them resulted in collisions, though it is not immediately clear if those were head on collisions or cars driving into stationary objects.  Waymo has already had to recall over 400 cars after two collisions with towed vehicles.  The learning curve for safe driverless cars seems to be steeper than many companies are willing to admit.

Happy patch Tuesday as well!