Waymo wants to help prevent accidents at the car door: safe exit functions.
Do you really think about thinking about the traffic when you open the door? According to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, collisions with bicyclists when a car door opens into moving traffic, also known as “dooring,” are the second most common type of collision resulting in serious injury or death.
To prevent these “dooring” incidents, Waymo Implemented new and more effective methods to alert passengers when other road users are nearby. The same sensor technology is used for this as the Waymo Driver uses for navigating on the road.
Since Waymo is operated completely autonomously and nobody is behind the wheel to warn, other methods were developed to provide passengers with additional signals. While Waymo has always recommended checking the area before exiting the vehicle, an audible warning will now sound and a visual warning will appear should a bicycle or other vehicle approach the car.
The testers are the customers, but studies on dooring have also been conducted. This approach also increases the understanding of how Waymo vehicles work.
David Fluhr
I’ve been writing about autonomous & connected driving since 2011. I studied social sciences at the HU Berlin and have been a freelance journalist since 2012. Contact: mail@autonomes-fahren.de