The Waymos are just like the rest of us.
Waymo finally launched their self-driving rideshare services in Nashville last week after months of testing and mapping the city with their autonomous vehicles.
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 until last week, the cars had been operating without riders as they “trained” in Nashville before officially launching to passengers.
One thing they may not have trained for, though, was a common annoyance for Nashville drivers: Pedal taverns.
If you’ve had the misfortune of trying to navigate around downtown Music City, there’s no doubt you’ve had to deal with pedal taverns full of drunk tourists clogging up the streets and holding up traffic like a tractor on a two lane road. (Actually we also have party tractors too).
There are currently 26 pedal tavern permits issued by the Metro Transportation Licensing Commission to operate in the downtown Nashville area, and it’s hard to set foot in downtown Nashville without seeing at least one of these bikes causing a traffic jam in the city.
Well apparently the new Waymo vehicles are having a hard time adjusting to the slow-moving pedal pubs, because the company is blaming a pedal tavern for a traffic jam caused by one of their cars in the days after Waymo’s launch in Nashville.
In the video that was originally shared by @615nav on Instagram, a Waymo can be seen blocking an intersection as it appears to be turning into oncoming traffic at an intersection in downtown Nashville.
And if you look closely at the video, what’s sitting in the lane that the Waymo was apparently supposed to be in? A pedal tavern.
Well according to Fox17, Waymo says that the confusion for the car came when it attempted to pass the pedal tavern and ended up stuck in the intersection, facing oncoming traffic.
Nashville problems…
Of course the pedal tavern incident hasn’t been the only problem for Waymo since they launched in Nashville. Several videos have gone viral showing the cars entering construction zones, and in one case even driving down the pedestrian alley behind the Ryman Auditorium:
@thebeasleybrothers Not sure they’re supposed to drive here but ok #nashville #waymo @Waymo
There’s been quite a bit of backlash to the autonomous vehicles, citing the traffic problems they’re causing and the impact the service has on local rideshare drivers.
But honestly, I’m all for them, even if it takes a little while to get the bugs worked out. 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. And let’s be honest, how many traffic backups or blocked intersections happen every day that are caused by actual human drivers but never make it to social media? The only reason these are newsworthy is because it’s a new technology that most people aren’t familiar with yet.
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).
Obviously it’s going to take a little while to get the kinks out, but then again it takes all of us a while to figure out how to deal with those annoying pedal taverns too.
