Waymo Recalls 1,200 Self-Driving Vehicles due to Crashes Caused by Software Issues

• The Google-affiliated company currently operates over 1,500 self-driving vehicles in the United States.

• Vehicles equipped with its older software can collide with fences and barriers.

• No injuries related to these incidents have been reported.

Following 16 incidents where its autonomous vehicles have collided with gates and barriers between 2022 and late 2024, Waymo has recalled most of its fleet.

While no injuries have been reported, the NHTSA, which launched a probe into Waymo last May, said that it expects a competent driver would have easily avoided these collisions since the obstacles were clearly visible.

The issue apparently comes from the company’s fifth-generation software, which has trouble identifying thin or semi-transparent objects, such as chains, fences, gates, and barriers.

Since the latest sixth-generation software is not affected, Waymo’s newest autonomous vehicles are not included in the recall.

This still leaves the vast majority of its fleet subject to the software glitch, however, with 1,212 vehicles recalled out of a total fleet of “over 1,500”.

Waymo defends itself by pointing to the number of paid autonomous trips its vehicles provide in the Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix and Austin areas, which exceeds 250,000 every week.

The company also claims its autonomous technologies reduce the number of injuries per mile driven compared to human-controlled vehicles.

This is not the first time the Google-backed company has had to recall part of its fleet after driving incidents.

Indeed, 444 vehicles were recalled in February 2024 after two minor accidents showed Waymo’s technologies had difficulty anticipating the movements of a towed vehicle.

Furthermore, 670 Waymo vehicles were recalled again last June after one of them hit a utility pole in Phoenix a month earlier.

To be fair to Waymo, other self-driving vehicle makers are having trouble as well, with General Motors’ Cruise division being folded back into its parent company’s main operations following an accident that seriously injured a pedestrian back in 2023.

Amazon’s Zoox autonomous driving division also recalled 270 of its vehicles just last week after a collision between an empty robotaxi and a passenger vehicle in Las Vegas, thankfully without injuries.

Autonomous driving capabilities still show promise, and many companies continue to believe in its future, but progress remains to be made before large-scale robotaxi operations can be launched across countries and continents.

Source: Automotive News