Waymo, the autonomous carpooling company which launched its services in Los Angeles at the end of last year, recalls more than 1,200 vehicles due to a software defect, the National Highway Traffic Safety Assn. said on Wednesday.
The recall comes after a series of minor accidents with doors, channels and other obstacles on the road that did not lead to any injury, said the company based in Mountain View, California, in a file with the NHTSA. The recall applies to 1,212 driver -free vehicles operating on automated automated fifth generation of Waymo.
Waymo has published a software update to resolve the problem, and this update has already been deployed in all the vehicles assigned, said the recall notice.
The company operates more than 1,500 vehicles in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix and Austin. The recall does not affect any vehicle currently on the road, said Waymo spokesperson Ethan Teicher.
Autonomous vehicles were subject to more in -depth examination following several problems with Tesla’s autonomous technology and an incident in 2023 during which a pedestrian was seriously injured by a cruising vehicle.
The NHTSA opened an investigation into Waymo in May 2024 after receiving reports of 22 incidents involving the fifth generation software. The agency said several incidents under survey “involved collisions with clearly visible objects that a competent driver should avoid.” The investigation remains open.
In February 2024, Waymo recalled 444 vehicles after two minor collisions in Arizona. Although incidents involving Waymo vehicles are careful, vehicles are safer than human drivers, according to data collected by the SWISS Re insurer.
Based on the data collected by Waymo, their driver -free vehicles had 81% of accidents for the deployment of airbag less, 78% of placed in less injuries and 62% of the police declared by the police as traditional vehicles to cover the same distance. Waymo vehicles rely on cameras, sensors and a type of laser radar called Lidar to operate independently.
“Waymo offers more than 250,000 trips paid each week in some of the most difficult driving environments in the United States,” said Teicher. “Our assessment of injury reduction over tens of millions of miles fully autonomous, show that our technology makes roads safer.”
Operated by Google’s mother -parent company, Alphabet, Waymo put its first autonomous vehicle on the road in 2015. It launched its driver -free carpooling service known as Waymo One in 2020, and plans to spread to Atlanta, Miami and Washington, DC, next year.
