Autonomous traffic jam with four Waymo vehicles driving... autonomously.
Technological advances can be extraordinary, but they can also lead to hilarious scenes. One of these recently took place on the streets of San Francisco, where Waymo's Jaguar I-Pace vehicles are crisscrossing the city's streets fully autonomously, acting as taxis for people who use their service.
On our recent visit there, we were amused to see these vehicles circulating among all the others in the city with no apparent problems. Stories have been told of glitches in the place where they all have to park at night (details a little further down), but from what we could observe, it works pretty well.
Inevitably, however, funny situations arise. The one that catches our eye is a small traffic jam that lasted a few minutes and was filmed by a passerby who was clearly amused by the whole thing.
What happens in the scene below is that a Waymo vehicle comes up behind a van blocking its lane. Just as it's about to pass, it hits another Waymo vehicle, which, of course, stops it in its tracks. The vehicles study each other to see what the other will do, and remain motionless. Ironically, another Waymo vehicle appears behind each of them, blocking the flow of traffic. Fortunately, the vehicle coming in the opposite direction of the one blocked by the van eventually "understands" that it can move forward, clearing the traffic jam.
It's worth noting that if people are inside the vehicles, they can call the control centre for help in clearing the jam.
Other amusing scenes have been filmed in the past, especially in places where vehicles have to park at night. As you can see in the video below, the models get a little confused when faced with too much traffic, and at first they were instructed to honk after a few seconds in front of a dead end. The problem is that when 20 or 30 Waymo vehicles are in the same place and they all start honking, it quickly becomes cacophonous and unbearable for residents of nearby buildings, especially if the situation occurs in the middle of the night.
Fortunately, more fear than harm.
It will be recalled that at this time last year, an accident involving a General Motors Cruise Origin vehicle claimed a life. A pedestrian had been struck by another vehicle (with a driver) and thrown in front of a Cruise vehicle, which failed to stop and dragged the individual for a considerable distance (20 feet) before coming to a stop.
As a result, Cruise's permit to operate self-driving vehicles on city streets was revoked, and the company has since abandoned the area in favour of Waymo.
