One of Waymo's self-driving vans has been involved in a car accident in Arizona, the company has confirmed, although in this case there does not seem to have been much that the autonomous car could have done to avoid a blow – the video that you can see below shows another car that deviates directly towards it.
Waymo became the new home of Google's autonomous auto efforts in 2016, and recently began testing some routes without safety drivers. In this case, a driver was on board and was injured in the accident.
According to the report from the Chandler Police Department, a vehicle on the other side of the road had to turn to avoid a collision, only to cross to the other side of the road and directly hit the Waymon minivan. You can see the Waymo video of the incident below.
"Today while testing our autonomous driving vehicle in Chandler, Arizona, another car circulating in a lane in the opposite direction was diverted through the median and hit our minivan," he said. Waymo in a statement to SlashGear. "We are concerned about the welfare and safety of our test driver and we wish him a full recovery."
Uber suspended its driverless car operations in Arizona after a pedestrian was shot down and killed. However, on this occasion, it seems that the fault rests with the old human conductors of flesh and blood.
There are conflicting reports about whether the minivan was in autonomous or manual mode at the time of the accident . Waymo regularly publishes safety reports on the progress of its stand-alone technology and we can probably expect to hear more about this incident in due time.