Waymo recalls software after two self-driving cars hit the same truck

Waymo, the self-driving car division of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, issued a recall for its own self-driving car software after two of its cars hit the same truck minutes apart.

Waymo, the self-driving car division of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, issued a recall for its own self-driving car software after two of its vehicles hit the same truck minutes apart. Minutes apart from one another, two Waymo cars came across the same tow truck that was pulling a pickup truck in Phoenix, Arizona. The pickup was being towed backwards and at an angle rather than being lined up straight behind the tow truck, according to a Waymo blog post published Tuesday. The pickup’s front end was partly in a turn lane next to the lane the tow truck was driving in. Both Waymo cars incorrectly interpreted what their cameras were seeing and, because of that, wrongly predicted the how the truck was going to move, Waymo said. After a first Waymo vehicle hit the pickup, the tow truck kept driving. A few minutes later, a second Waymo vehicle came across the truck and also hit the pickup. There were no riders in either of the Waymo vehicles, although the company operates a driverless ride-hailing service in that city. Following the incidents, Waymo informed local police, a state safety agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of the incidents, the company wrote. After researching what happened, Waymo changed its vehicle software and installed the updated software on all its vehicles between late December 2023 and early January 2024, according to the blog post. After discussions with NHTSA, Waymo determined that it should file a recall report, which is done when a company makes a safety-related change to vehicles on the road. Since Waymo does not sell vehicles to individuals or other companies, the software update was confined to its own fleet of self-driving Jaguar I-Paces.