The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) found more incidents involving Waymo self-driving cars than they initially reported. In a letter from NHTSA to Waymo, they mentioned finding nine extra incidents involving Waymo robotaxis, on top of the 22 incidents they were already looking into.
NHTSA is checking Waymo because their self-driving taxis have been acting strangely, sometimes breaking traffic rules and getting into 17 crashes. It’s not clear what exactly happened in these nine new incidents, but NHTSA said they involved crashes with things that a good driver should have avoided, like gates, parked cars, and traffic signs.
NHTSA sent Waymo some questions to answer by June 11, and they also asked for videos of all the incidents.
This investigation started after Waymo got approval to expand in California in March. They plan to have more Waymo-operated Jaguar I-Pace EVs in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Waymo isn’t the only company facing problems with their robotaxis. GM Cruise had to stop their public testing because of incidents, but they recently started again in Arizona with people ready to take over in case of emergencies. Tesla is also getting ready to launch their own robotaxis soon, and Zoox, owned by Amazon, is getting ready to offer self-driving cars to Amazon Prime members.
However, many people are still worried about self-driving cars. In San Francisco, some residents even set fire to Waymo’s I-Pace EVs earlier this year, showing that not everyone is ready to trust these cars just yet.
