- Four Waymo driverless vehicles created their own traffic jam in San Francisco recently
- It started when one tried to pass a stopped van but met another Waymo in the opposite direction
- The city’s also had to deal with Waymos that honk when they park, and jammed a highway entrance ramp
Self-driving cars are gradually improving, but it’s Waymo fun to watch them when they’re basically too smart for their own good. That was the case recently in San Francisco, the city that’s allowed a fleet of driverless Waymo ride-hailing vehicles to roam its streets and take passengers to their destinations. Waymo vehicles are of course programmed to stop when something’s in their way — but in this case, four of them all jammed the street in the city’s North Beach area in a scene straight out of slapstick comedy, when none of them could quite figure out what the other ones were doing.
The initial culprit setting it all in motion was an Amazon delivery van driver, who double-parked on the busy street. A Waymo car – the company uses the Jaguar I-Pace – came up behind it, realized it was stopped, and then started to go around it.
That might have worked, except that another Waymo was coming in the opposite direction. So as per their don’t-hit-nothin’ systems, they both stopped — and then, to further add to the stand-off, two more Waymo cars came along, one behind each of them, and all four sat there, trying to figure out what to do.
Eventually, the second Waymo on the scene finally decided it was okay to proceed, but not before a bystander caught it all on a phone and put it on TikTok, and who later told Road & Track that the whole mess remained in place for three or four minutes, while the lines of vehicles with drivers got longer and longer behind them.
This particular issue was relatively short-lived and relatively funny, at least for anyone who wasn’t stuck behind these four cars. But those who were aren’t the only ones who aren’t laughing at some of the things Waymo cars do.
In August, we reported on resident complaints about a Waymo depot parking lot. The cars are programmed to honk their horns when they figure another Waymo is getting too close — and since cars that are parking themselves do tend to snuggle up to other vehicles when they do, those nearby have to listen to them loudly warning each other.
And last April, SF News reported on a traffic jam on the entrance to a highway, a month after Waymo was given permission for its cars to drive on the freeway. It appears that, for whatever reason, a real person at the wheel of a Waymo pulled off and onto the side of the road, in a closed section designated by road cones.
The problem was that several other Waymo cars followed it and then obediently stopped behind it, blocking the road for about 30 minutes. Last February, a crowd in San Francisco attacked a Waymo car and set it on fire; and while we definitely don’t condone vandalism, it’s sometimes easy to see why people often get frustrated when sharing the road with driverless cars.
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