Autonomous cars are slowly becoming more and more of a reality. They used to be the measly, silly things that people used to say the future held; however, now the future is here, and these vehicles are seemingly not far away. With that said, they are still with many significant faults, causing widespread issues in their testing phases. One of the current leading autonomous car manufacturers, Waymo, is under investigation due to some of the issues that have arisen throughout the testing process. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened numerous cases against the company after receiving more than 22 reports of incidents in the last few months of things anywhere from car accidents to traffic violations.
The NHTSA currently has four open cases investigating Waymo.
The investigations are not only looking into Waymo as an individual company, but also digging deeper into its parent company, Alphabet. Alphabet is also the parent company of Google. Waymo used to be a subsidiary of Google specifically before it cut ties and went to just Alphabet. However, this former Google led company is not the only company under investigation for autonomous vehicles. Zoox, a subsidiary of Amazon, is also under investigation for several incidents with their testing phases of their self-driving vehicles.
Many of the accidents involving Waymo were the cars hitting stationary objects, such as gates, chains, and other parked vehicles. Sometimes they have disobeyed traffic laws too, leading to more dangerous road conditions. Luckily, there have been no injuries sustained due to any of these incidents thus far, but nonetheless the NHTSA is handling the reports justly.
Zoox, on the other hand, is a different story.
There have been injuries reported in some of the reports against Zoox. Two different occasions have happened in which the self-driving vehicle has braked very suddenly, and the vehicle has been rear-ended by motorcyclists. There have been incidents in which a human driver was present in the car as a safety guide, and they have reportedly been injured. Similarly to Waymo, there have also been times in which they have not followed traffic laws.
Both companies are seemingly cooperating with the NHTSA.
