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The hits keep coming for Waymo, whose self-driving taxi cabs are behaving like European tourists who haven’t quite gotten the hang of driving on the right side of the road.
During peak congestion due to the World Cup in Los Angeles, frustrated commuters caught a Waymo trying to drive the wrong way through a jammed intersection.
Video shared by ABC 13 shows the red Waymo stopped on the wrong side of a double-line in Inglewood, California, forcing oncoming vehicles to merge into the farther lane. Though it mostly remains stopped at a red light while traffic crawls past, the very end of the video shows the terrifying moment the robocab starts rolling forward, straight into the oncoming lane.
“Uhh, why is this Waymo on the wrong side the road?” asked Kimoon Kim, the driver who recorded the video. “It’s supposed to be in the left turn lane.”
Speaking to the local station, Kim said the Waymo then abruptly cut him off at the intersection so that it could rudely merge back into the correct lane and make a left turn.
🚨 Waymo Drives Into Oncoming Traffic Lane?! 😳
It’s just the latest embarrassing episode for Waymo. A similar incident occurred just three months ago in Houston, where drivers captured footage of one of its cabs turning head-on into a one-way HOV lane before backing up and correcting itself. Elsewhere, Waymos have led police on high-speed chases, swarmed sleepy suburban streets, and violated bike lane boundaries.
The issues are evidently so numerous that New York lawmakers moved to block the rollout of Waymos into the Big Apple, a major rebuke for a company pushing for a rapid expansion into American cities.
Waymo was contacted for comment.
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