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A pair of sports influencers just presented Waymo with its latest test: will it jump the gun on a critical snap?
The two set up in front of the Waymo in a typical football formation, in an attempt to bait the robotaxi into jumping offsides with a tricky cadence. (In American football, offside is an infraction that occurs when a defensive player crosses the line of scrimmage before the ball is in play.)
The Waymo shows elite discipline at the line, refusing to budge even as the clock runs down, forcing the boys to call time. To be clear, the Waymo doesn’t exactly participate; it just sits there like it’s supposed to do when it comes face-to-face with a human.
Still, it’s a good bit given that the Waymo could start rolling despite the humans in front of it, which happens much more often than you might think. As a scathing CNN analysis of Waymo’s safety history found, there have been hundreds of incidents in which the robotaxis have run red lights, driven into oncoming traffic or active emergency scenes, or come to a screeching halt within inches of a pedestrian.
“These are the early warning indicators that all is not well… that’s how companies need to treat them. That’s how regulators should treat them,” University of South Carolina law and technology scholar Bryant Walker Smith told CNN. “This is the story of progress… we replace one set of problems with a new set of problems.”
After a wayward Waymo delayed emergency workers responding to a mass shooting in Austin back in March, Paige Ellis, a member of the Austin City Council, said the “question is not if this is going to turn into a deadly situation for someone, but when.”
Waymo has consistently defended its safety record, though has recently issued a national recall in reaction to their vehicles’ handling of floods in Austin.
“No technology is perfect,” Waymo told CNN in a statement, “but while human drivers can only learn from their individual experiences, Waymo takes community feedback and applies those safety learnings to our entire fleet.”
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