The streets of Austin have been echoing with more than the usual hum of traffic as of late, they've also been filled with the grumbles and groans of local residents and officials frustrated by their new AI-driven neighbors. According to FOX 7 Austin, Waymo's autonomous vehicles have been involved in multiple incidents ranging from stalling and speeding to full-fledged crashes, drawing ire from the Austin Police Department, the Austin Fire Department, and concerned citizens.
Complaints have piled up against the technology upstart, with some residents, such as Gabriel Mendez, expressing their vexation at Waymo's overly cautious approach to traffic signals, "Waymo stops immediately when there's a yellow light when you have like five seconds to cross-over, so when you stop right then and there you're stopping. A bunch of other cars unexpectedly because this is a yellow light," Mendez told FOX 7 Austin. Masi Moosavi, on the other hand, noted to FOX 7 Austin the potential for these driverless cars to reduce drunk driving, a silver lining to what has been a stormy integration of driverless vehicles into Austin's landscape.
Adding fuel to the fire of public scrutiny, a recent incident involving a Waymo vehicle leaving a woman and her friends stranded has gone viral. Becky Levin Navarro took to TikTok to share her "zero stars" experience, claiming that the vehicle refused to let them out while stopped under the Mopac bridge. "We called customer support. It stopped us right here. It wouldn't let us out of the car," Navarro said in a video that has since grabbed the city's collective attention, as reported by MySA. She and her fellow passengers decided to exit the vehicle and proceed on foot along the roadside, a decision that paints an unnerving picture of the safety protocols supposedly in place by Waymo.
In response, Waymo has reaffirmed that their riders "always have the ability to pause their ride and exit the vehicle when desired," and that at "no point did our Rider Support team remotely unlock the door for them," as stated to MySA, despite the clamor raised by multiple reports since July 2024 involving near misses, traffic jams, and insubordination towards police directives. The city's hands, however, seem to be tied by Senate Bill 2205, which places the regulation of autonomous vehicles in the realm of the Texas state government and not with the local municipalities, it's a situation that leaves Austin's officials with few cards to play as they deal with the unpredictable nature of these technological behemoths gone astray.
