Phoenix Customer Gets In Waymo. Then It Stops On Tracks—And The Train Is Approaching: ‘Gunna Get Waymo Money After That Lawsuit’

A Phoenix business owner captured a scary scene involving a Waymo driving on a light rail track with a passenger inside.

The Instagram account Luis Central Tires (@luis_central_tires) went viral, raking in over 2.4 million views and thousands of comments from people expressing their disdain with the Google-owned autonomous rideshare business.

A text overlay in Luis’ clip explains the severity of the situation. “Waymo on light rail track with passenger inside,” it reads.

The video shows the autonomous taxi idling on the railroad tracks. Directly behind the Waymo, a light rail car approaches. Before it can reach the Waymo, its passenger exits the car. “Yo get out, get out,” someone says in the clip. “Damn,” he adds, as another voice off-screen says, “and here it comes, too,” referencing the railcar.

The video then cuts to footage of the Waymo driving down the track with its emergency lights engaged. After moving forward a few feet, the Waymo finally slows and comes to a stop. Next, the camera pans over to the light rail car on the same track—and it’s only one stop away.

Someone says that the man is about to capture an accident live on camera.

Instead of driving over the curb and back onto the road, the Waymo switches to reverse and inches closer to the railcar.

Did the Waymo Ever Leave the Track?

According to local outlet News 12, law enforcement authorities did receive a call about the self-driving taxi on the light rail track. However, the Waymo reportedly left the area by the time authorities arrived. Police said that there weren’t any reported disruptions to the light rail service. This likely indicates that the Waymo left the track before the railcar ran into it.

News 12 spoke with Arizona State University professor Andrew Maynard, who teaches courses in advanced technology. According to Maynard, autonomous drivers like the ones found in Waymo vehicles have limitations when encountering new situations. These systems, he said, don’t possess the same fast problem-solving skills as the human brain.

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“Humans are really good at seeing a brand new situation and trying to work out how to get around it,” Maynard said. “Waymos don’t have that capability.”

On the flip side, he said that Waymos and autonomous driving tech are better at processing preexisting data. “They are smarter than humans when they know the road, and they get confused when something completely blindsides them,” the professor said.

A Valley Metro spokesperson told Arizona-based outlet AZFamily that the Waymo traveled on the light rail track at around 9am on Jan. 7. They said that an employee “observed an autonomous Waymo vehicle on the northbound light rail tracks near Southern Avenue and Central Avenue in Phoenix.”

Valley Metro’s operations controls center “was immediately notified [and] light rail operations staff responded to the scene,” the rep said. The statement adds that Waymo was contacted regarding the incident. Although the Waymo had left the scene before police arrived, Valley Metro did say that they amended their ride trajectories in order to “minimize service impacts.”

Valley Metro added that “the incident caused no significant delays and the scene was clear by 9:15am.”

An Autonomous Nightmare Scenario

Several people who commented on Luis’ post wrote that the Waymo passenger should sue the company for the incident.

Others said that they don’t feel safe driving on the road with the autonomous vehicles. “Waymo should be freaking banned,” one declared.

Another shared their fears with Waymo developing plans to take autonomous vehicles on highways. “They got the nerve to put these on the freeway,” they wrote. Someone else pointed out what they believed to be a double standard. “If I did that I'd receive a ticket. They better be getting fined!” they wrote.

InsideEVs has reached out to Waymo via email and Luis via Instagram direct message for further comment. We'll be sure to update this article if either responds.

 

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