ATLANTA — Waymo says it is pausing service in another state over the weather after the driverless cars got caught up in flood waters here in Atlanta.
In a new statement from the company, Waymo said that it is pausing service in Texas over forecasted severe weather that is expected there.
“We continue to closely monitor forecasts, alerts, and live weather conditions, and we will resume serving riders soon,” The company said.
This comes just a couple of days after the Waymos got caught up in the flash flooding from intense rain that fell on Wednesday.
As we showed on Channel 2 Action News at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, one of the autonomous cars drove into flood water along North Avenue in midtown.
No one was inside the car at the time. But for Rachel Knudsen, she wasn’t as lucky.
She told Channel 2’s Richard Elliot that she got stuck in the Waymo that picked her up on Wednesday.
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Knudsen says the Waymo managed to get out of one pool of water and moved on, but then a few minutes later…
“The Waymo didn’t appear to be slowing down as much as I would have expected it to slow down and hit the water,” she said. “It wasn’t, you know, an incredibly deep pool of water, but it was enough.”
She said that Waymo eventually credited her ride and sent a human driver to get her home.
Waymo says it uses three types of sensors to drive its cars, one of which uses lasers. Heavy rain can scatter the light from those lasers.
Georgia Tech’s Dr. Glen Chou, an avid Waymo user, says the water can act as a prism to scatter the light and momentarily confuse the Waymo.
But, like humans, Dr. Chou says that Waymos can struggle to determine just how deep a puddle is.
“In general, these are not equipped on cars, and so they will typically struggle to get precise estimates of puddle depth, which can cause issues like we’ve seen,” he said.
He says that, regardless, he trusts Waymo and is confident that these are small problems that the company is working on.
For now, Waymo has pulled its cars off the Atlanta streets to look at these issues.
In a statement, Waymo said: “Safety is Waymo’s top priority, both for our riders and everyone we share the road with.”
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