Bold move trying to drive down Broadway on a weekend.
Waymo is gearing up to launch their autonomous rideshare vehicles in Nashville in the near future, after months of testing and training for the vehicles on the streets of Music City.
If you’re not familiar with Waymo, the driverless vehicles are basically like Uber and Lyft, except there’s no driver. You book the ride on an app (in Nashville the company has partnered with Lyft and will be available through their app) and the car shows up, you get in, hit a button, and it takes you where you need to go, all without a driver behind the wheel.
The company has already been offering services to riders in 10 cities across the country, including San Francisco, Miami, Los Angeles, Dallas and Austin, Texas. But so far, the cars have been operating without riders as they “train” in Nashville before officially launching to passengers.
Unfortunately, it seems like there’s still a little bit more training to do to learn to deal with the chaos of Broadway.
Over the weekend, a Waymo was spotted blocking an intersection on the busy party street after apparently getting confused when it got stuck in an intersection.
According to an interview with WKRN, Ricky Duke says that the car was in the intersection around 3 AM on Saturday when the light turned red with the car still stuck in traffic.
And if you’ve ever tried to drive on Broadway on the weekends (0 of 10, do not recommend), you know that this is a common occurrence: Drivers will force their way into an intersection while trying to turn, and then get stuck there when the light changes, blocking traffic coming in the opposite direction and only compounding the already-slow moving traffic in the area. And it’s only made worse by pedestrians who don’t follow the signals and try to cross when they aren’t supposed to.
But unlike a regular driver who can maneuver themselves out of the situation, the Waymo apparently required some assistance after getting confused by the lights and trying to turn into oncoming traffic.
According to Waymo, a Metro Nashville Police Department officer was able to get into the vehicle and disable the self-driving feature to drive it to a nearby parking lot, where it was once again set free to move about the city on its own:
“We appreciate the quick assistance from the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department. We will continue to proactively train and collaborate with Nashville’s first responders on how to work with our technology, as part of our shared mission of improving road safety.”
There’s been quite a bit of backlash online to Waymo coming to Nashville, despite the fact that they’re not yet carrying passengers. Many are worried about the safety of autonomous cars, but the company cites its data that shows driverless vehicles are actually safer on the road and involved in 92% fewer injury crashes.
Personally, I can’t wait for Waymo to launch here. I took my first ride in a Waymo a few weeks ago, and I couldn’t have been more impressed. The cars are nice, you can control the music and the temperature, and I never once felt unsafe during the ride. I was even impressed by the fact that it could turn right on red after making sure it was clear, and also detect when a car is stopped to let it merge into traffic. (And as someone who gets horrifically carsick, the thing I’m most excited about is being able to sit in the front seat and not having to make small talk with the driver while I’m fighting for my life trying not to puke).
Of course the cars aren’t perfect, as the incident on Broadway shows. But then again, how many times a night do drivers get stuck in an intersection and block traffic on Broadway and you never hear about it on the news? The only reason this is a story is because it was a driverless vehicle, and because of a handful of other high-profile incidents where the vehicles have caused problems on the road.
Notably, following the shooting in Austin a few weeks ago, a Waymo got stuck in the chaos and ended up blocking an ambulance trying to respond to the scene. Obviously those are problems that the company has to address, whether it’s by ensuring that all first responders are trained to move them out of the way quickly or by better teaching the cars how to get out of the way.
But overall, I’m encouraged by my experience with the autonomous rideshares and can’t wait until I can finally get one in Nashville.
I’ll probably have it drop me off a couple blocks away from Broadway though. Even if the car’s doing all the work, I don’t want to deal with the traffic down there anyway.
