Waymos Block Traffic in Phoenix

Last Friday was the time for Waymo’s robotaxis to get stuck and block traffic. The phenomenon, to which there have already been several incidents mostly involving Cruise’s robotaxis, this time affected as many as nine Waymo vehicles in Phoenix, Arizona. There, Google sister company Waymo has already been operating a driverless robotaxi service since 2018. As the area covered expands, new situations arise that had not previously occurred.

In this video, we see nine Waymo robotaxis blocking a lane of traffic, some in parking bays and some on the road. It is not clear from the video how this happened, but it may be a confusing and sometimes contradictory sequence of instructions from road signs and law enforcement officers regulating traffic for the autonomous vehicles. For example, arrows on temporary street signs point right into parking bays, making it difficult to navigate out. According to the poster of the video, the situation was cleared up after a few minutes by Waymo engineers who rushed over.

This article was also published in German.