Shocking footage showed a driverless Waymo car stopping between the railway tracks and the stopping barrier as a train passed just inches away.
The incident occurred on Saturday in Austin, Texas, though no passenger was in the vehicle at the time. In the video, captured by Tristyn K Donovan and uploaded to TikTok, the car is seen with the stopping arm resting on its roof as the train speeds past.
"Waymo vehicles have safely traversed railroad crossings millions of times fully autonomously,” a Waymo spokesperson told The Independent in a statement. “In these instances, the vehicles performed a controlled stop more than 2.5 meters before the tracks, after the crossing lights activated as the vehicles approached the crossing.”
The spokesperson added that an investigation carried out by the company had shown that the vehicle had been “acting conservatively” about crossing the tracks as soon as the flashing red light had activated.
The vehicle had been approaching the railroad crossing at 22 mph, company analysis showed and had begun to slow down when it was around 13 meters from the crossing gate. The “Driver” of the Waymo had determined that the car was stopped at a “safe distance” from the tracks.
“While the vehicles remained at a distance from the tracks, we recognize the concern caused by stopping past the crossing gate,” the spokesperson said.
Waymo said it was temporarily restricting its vehicles’ travel at similar crossings while it conducted a thorough analysis of the incident and developed the stopping system’s response.
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The company acknowledged that a second, similar incident had taken place recently. The Independent has sought confirmation as to where and when the incident took place. In that instance, the vehicle was traveling at approximately 20 mph and stopped 2.5 meters from the track, after the crossing gate.
Both incidents come after another Waymo temporarily blocked an ambulance trying to get to the scene of a mass shooting in Austin in the early hours of March 1, which was also caught on camera by bystanders.
The footage showed the car stopped and completely blocking the street as an ambulance approached. Shortly after a police cruiser arrived, an officer tried to communicate with the company via the car’s speaker system – and the vehicle pulled out of the way into a parking garage a minute later.
Austin-Travis County EMS chief Robert Luckritz later said authorities did not believe the incident affected emergency responders' work. However, it has raised questions about how autonomous vehicles operate around fast-moving emergency scenes.
"While the Waymo Driver operates in dense U.S. cities, smoothly navigating interactions with emergency vehicles (EVs) at all hours, we are dedicated to learning from this situation and how we show up for our community as we continue improving road safety in the cities we serve," the Waymo representative said at the time.
