A robot taxi accidentally hit a bicycle! Do you trust today's autonomous driving?

Not long ago, a Waymo driverless taxi and a cyclist had an accident in San Francisco. The accident occurred around 3 pm local time. After the accident, the cyclist was not seriously injured and did not need to be sent to the hospital. He was able to leave the scene on his own.

Waymo is the self-driving division of Google's parent company Alphabet. According to statistics, the company currently has 438 self-driving cars on California roads, including test vehicles that do not provide ride services. In 2023, the company's vehicles drove more than 4.8 million miles in California, more than 3.6 million miles were driven by safety drivers, and more than 1.1 million miles were completely unmanned.

Waymo released a full statement following the incident: "On February 6th, at the intersection of 17th and Mississippi Streets in San Francisco, one of our vehicles collided with a cyclist. The Waymo vehicle came to a complete stop at a four-way intersection. An oncoming large truck drove through the intersection in our direction, and when it was our turn to proceed, we entered the intersection. The cyclist was blocked by the truck and soon followed behind it into the path of the Waymo vehicle. When they became fully visible, our vehicle braked heavily but was unable to avoid the collision. Waymo called police to the scene and the cyclist left on his own, reporting only minor scratches to our knowledge. We are in the process of contacting the appropriate authorities regarding this incident."

Bicycles are the biggest challenge for autonomous driving

Bicycles on the road pose a big problem for self-driving cars. They are smaller and more flexible than other cars, but move much faster than pedestrians, which poses a great challenge to sensor recognition, self-driving judgment and response.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has made relevant statistics that nearly 1,000 cyclists die in traffic accidents and more than 130,000 are injured in the United States every year.

Waymo has trained its self-driving algorithms on how to share the right of way with bicycles, and has worked with cycling groups like the California Bicycle Coalition and the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition to gather feedback on their expectations of drivers, enabling the company to adjust its testing and validation procedures to better provide safety for cyclists.

Waymo officials said that when encountering bicycles, some drivers will give way, while others may choose to overtake, but cyclists have almost no way of knowing what type of driver they are encountering because, unlike human drivers, AI cannot nod, make eye contact, wave or gesture.

The Waymo Driver observes the vehicle's surroundings through sensors that can see 360 ​​degrees around the vehicle day and night, with a range of up to three football fields, helping the vehicle detect cyclists in most situations. Waymo's system uses all this information, along with experience accumulated through real-world driving and simulation, to understand what's going on around it and predict what might happen next.

Secondly, at the algorithm level, Waymo will use a more civilized driving style, providing cyclists with a wider berth when passing when appropriate, or politely providing them with time and space to cross the crosswalk to ensure driving safety.

Waymo said that they have conducted extensive testing of driverless cars in closed-loop tracks and simulations to help their self-driving cars prepare for the most extreme situations. Although there are many factors in this traffic accident, it seems difficult to avoid, but the tragedy still happened during actual road operation.

The accident could put Waymo in crisis after its competitor, General Motors' self-driving unit Cruise, had its California license revoked in October 2023 after a Cruise robotaxi tried to pull over when a pedestrian was under the car, dragging the woman about 20 feet (about 6 meters) at 7 mph before stopping. The company did not show all the footage of the incident to regulators.

Autonomous driving technology presses the slow button

Autonomous driving is regarded as a highly difficult robot autonomous action program. It once experienced a period of rapid development, but after a series of accidents, the development of autonomous driving has slowed down. The current priority is to ensure the safety of this technology.

Cruise, the self-driving division of General Motors mentioned above, has been at the center of controversy over robot taxis. As early as December 2022, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) began investigating Cruise's self-driving system .

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's investigation focused on two alleged problems with Cruise's self-driving cars. The first was that they might brake suddenly when a car approached from behind, posing a potential danger to other drivers. The second was that the vehicles might be unable to move on the road after encountering a situation.

Shortly after the investigation, in April 2023, a Cruise robot taxi was involved in a car accident in San Francisco. The unmanned Cruise failed to brake quickly enough behind a city bus and hit the rear of a bus. Cruise then recalled 300 robot taxis to deal with the rear-end collision of its self-driving taxis.

In October of the same year, the California DMV suspended Cruise's final license. After the suspension, Cruise's performance has been going downhill. Shortly thereafter, Cruise co-founder and CEO Kyle Vogt and co-founder Dan Kan resigned, and Cruise laid off 900 employees, accounting for 24% of its total employees.

Other autonomous driving companies have also been affected accordingly. Tesla has also voluntarily recalled a batch of vehicles at the request of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). NHTSA is also continuing to investigate the safety issues of its Autopilot system.

Waymo, a subsidiary of Google's parent company Alphabet, which just hit the bicycle, originally planned to expand its robot taxi business in California. In January of this year, Waymo applied to the California Public Utilities Commission, which jointly regulates robot taxis with the DMV, to provide paid fares between the Peninsula and Sunnyvale city line. However, the Consumer Protection and Enforcement Department of the California Public Utilities Commission has suspended Waymo's application to expand its self-driving taxi service for 120 days.