Drive-thru insurmountable for AI Empty Waymo Robotaxi blocks fast food car counter
Robotaxis from Waymo casually make their way through heavy traffic in US cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles. But the car counter of a fast food restaurant was insurmountable for one of the cars.
10.04.2025, 22:38
dpa
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- A driverless Waymo robotaxi got stuck in the drive-thru lane of a Chick-fil-A in Los Angeles, causing a half-hour traffic jam before the area was closed.
- The vehicle had previously dropped off a passenger and was unable to move due to the narrowness of the parking lot.
- The fast food restaurant's car counter was closed after half an hour. Waymo announces a software adjustment.
A stray robotaxi from Google's sister company Waymo has caused a traffic jam at the car counter of a fast food restaurant in Los Angeles.
The driverless car drove into the drive-thru lane of a branch of the chicken chain Chick-fil-A without a passenger - and got stuck there.
After half an hour of waiting, the car counter was closed so Waymo could remove the vehicle, an eyewitness told local radio station KTLA. His video shows the robotaxi first trying to reverse out of the car counter lane and then giving up.
Waymo explained that the car had dropped off a passenger at the restaurant - and was then unable to leave the narrow parking lot surrounded by other cars. The software is being updated to prevent this from happening again in the future.
Waymo vehicle for traffic circle in a traffic circle
Waymo is by far the most successful developer of self-driving cars. The company, which emerged from Google's robot car program, is active in several US cities and now makes around 200,000 journeys with passengers per week. The vehicles navigate confidently through complex road traffic.
However, some unusual situations that humans could solve by communicating with other drivers, for example, throw them off course. The robotaxis then often simply stop.
For example, a Waymo car in San Francisco was observed blocking a passageway in a parking lot because it thought it was too narrow due to a large vehicle. Worse still for the driver behind it: He was blocked a short time later by another robotaxi, which also stopped.
In another case, a Waymo vehicle was filmed doing laps in a traffic circle without leaving it. Although such situations are rare, they do cause annoyance among local residents.
