Waymo’s autonomous vehicles are now going on and about in the city of San Francisco and according to reports, the cars sometimes have to queue before making multi-point turns in order to leave the way they came.
The company has stated its vehicles were merely obeying road rules which are meant to help limit traffic in some residential streets.
“There are some days where it can be up to 50,” Jennifer King told KPIX. “It’s literally every five minutes. And we’re all working from home, so this is what we hear.”
She said the human “safety drivers” supervising the automated cars “don’t have much to say other than the car is programmed and they’re just doing their job”.
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Another spokesperson for the company stated that the cars sometimes make a detour due to the presence of one of San Francisco’s “slow streets” which aim to limit traffic in certain residential areas – whatever that means.
“We continually adjust to dynamic San Francisco road rules. In this case, cars traveling north of California on 15th Avenue have to take a u-turn due to the presence of ‘slow streets’ signage on Lake,” the company said.
“So the Waymo driver was obeying the same road rules that any car is required to follow.”
Waymo started testing its self-driving taxi service with specialists behind the wheel in order to take control in case it’s required earlier this year.
The newness of the technology even though exciting had caused some mishaps in recent times such as the case of one of Waymo’s taxis that blocked a road in Arizona after it got confused by the presence of a traffic cone.
The company has however been offering its driverless ride-hailing service in Phoenix, Arizona, since Oct. 2020.
The company is also owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet.