A Waymo autonomous car avoided an accident in which a human misbehaved.
A red light violation happens again and again. Every 20 minutes in the US, according to the US Department of Transportation (DOT). Around 9,000 people have fallen victim to this behavior in the last ten years. The vehicle from Waymo noticed such an infringement and thereby avoided an accident.
A Waymo robotic taxi, without safety drivers on board, arrives at an intersection. the Traffic light signals the car green and the vehicle drives through the intersection. From the right, however, a pickup is heading for the intersection and runs over the red light. At the intersection, the Waymo vehicle stops and lets the wrong-way human pass.
Waymo Dmitri Dolgov, Waymo’s co-boss, tweeted the incident a week ago.
According to the @USDOT, someone runs a red light every ~20 min. Proud of the work by our team to make roads safer, like in this situation where the @Waymo driver in fully-auto mode (no human in the driver’s seat) safely reacts to a car blowing through a red light in Phoenix. pic.twitter.com/pDrIczVEMN
— Dmitri Dolgov (@dmitri_dolgov) June 1, 2022