Waymo has conducted a voluntary recall for software that was previously used by their fleet of autonomous vehicles. The move came after two of the company’s vehicles hit a pickup that was being towed in Phoenix on December 11, 2023.
According to Waymo, the vehicles hit a “backwards-facing pickup truck being improperly towed” in such a manner that the truck was “persistently angled across a center turn lane and a traffic lane.”
After the first Waymo vehicle “made contact,” the driver of the tow truck didn’t stop and continued on his way. A few minutes later, another Waymo vehicle hit the truck in the same manner.
The company said this was a “rare scenario” that only resulted in minor vehicle damage. Waymo added that neither of their vehicles were transporting passengers at the time and there were no injuries.
That being said, any crash involving an autonomous vehicle is alarming and Waymo immediately began investigating. After an analysis, the company determined “due to the persistent orientation mismatch of the towed pickup truck and tow truck combination, the Waymo AV incorrectly predicted the future motion of the towed vehicle.” The company then tested, validated, and released a software update to address the issue.
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The software update was released on December 20, but we’re just learning about the incident because the company concluded it would be “appropriate to submit a voluntary recall report of the software present on our fleet at the time of the two collisions.” Waymo added the recall “reflects how seriously we take our responsibility to safely deploy our technology and to transparently communicate with the public.”
The incident, while relatively minor, comes at a bad time for the autonomous vehicle industry as Cruise is still dealing with the fallout from an October incident that saw a pedestrian dragged approximately 20 feet (6 meters).
