On Sunday night around 8 p.m., a Waymo ran over a small, unleashed dog in San Francisco’s Western Addition, the company has confirmed.
The incident, which took place at Scott and Eddy streets, was publicized by the passenger, who was riding the autonomous vehicle with their family.
“Our Waymo just ran over a dog,” they wrote in r/waymo on Reddit. “Trying to call customer support. Called the police. Crowd is gathering not sure what to do.” (sic)
The autonomous vehicle company confirmed the incident on Monday. It is not clear if the dog is alive.
“Unfortunately, a Waymo vehicle made contact with a small, unleashed dog in the roadway. We are dedicated to learning from this situation and how we show up for our community as we continue improving road safety in the cities we serve,” a Waymo spokesperson wrote in a statement.
In a comment on Reddit, the passenger described the dog as a 20- to 30-pound dog.
“We have not received a status update on the dog,” the Waymo spokesperson wrote to Mission Local.
The incident comes weeks after a Waymo vehicle killed a Mission District bodega cat, KitKat, drawing national media attention and calls for broader scrutiny of driverless vehicles.
After the incident, the Mission District’s supervisor, Jackie Fielder, called for state legislators to let voters decide on a county-by-county basis whether they want autonomous vehicles on their streets.
The passenger who posted about the more recent incident did not respond when asked for comment. An hour after the original post, a moderator for the r/waymo subreddit posted additional details from the passenger while trying to verify that the incident had occurred.
“I was in a Waymo … Next thing I heard was yelping. I didn’t see the dog before the impact, but the kids were screaming about it.”
A 311 report was filed around the same time, 8:25 p.m., regarding a Waymo at that intersection. The report does not provide more details about the incident.
A spokesperson for San Francisco Animal Care and Control confirmed that the agency received the same 311 complaint on Monday morning. “Our captain called the reporting party, but there was nothing to follow up on,” the spokesperson said.
Waymo followed up with the passenger, according to the passenger’s post on Reddit. “They said they are sending team members to the area to look for the owner of the dog and to offer any veterinary or similar services.”
As of Monday afternoon, the 311 complaint was still open.
A human I know hit also hit an off-leash dog the other week, it did not make the news. Plenty of dogs roaming around off-leash.
If you love your pet, care for their safety with a leash & harness.
News flash: Roads are dangerous for animals period, even for some humans.
I would like Jackie Fielder to concentrate on the human mess at 16th & Mission please.
That doesn’t excuse crap robots that can’t see pets and can’t react.
Unleashed dog gets hit by a car, I wonder how many times that has happened in SF this year? Why does this one get a breathless feature story on ML but not the others?
I’m surprised you aren’t cheering.
I had a dog when I lived in NYC and she was NEVER off leash! I moved here 15 years ago and to this day I still can’t understand why dogs are allowed to roam into traffic.
We owe them more.
Accidents happen, dogs escape from owners. That doesn’t excuse a robot surveillance platform that can’t see them because they don’t try to do that. Why should we allow that when it can easily be fixed according to the robotaxi gospel singers that flood every article with their cries?
I am a dog person, through and through. I have two. I would spend my life only with dogs if I could.
Before people get too-too upset, I would like to know what this poor dog was doing off leash on its own in the neighborhood. There are so many people who walk their dogs in this town without leashes, thinking their dogs are perfectly and uniquely well behaved.
So, gross, Waymo needs to figure out the critter issue, but there is a whole story we just don’t know yet.
First, lots of animals are hit – run over by cars. Millions and millions each year. 90% of the time the animal is at fault and zero chance to avoid the accident.
Dogs that are off leash are a menace.
Waymo (unlike the n*z* owned company) publishes all of their data. Self driving Waymo cars have between 1/4 and 1/10 the accidents of human drivers. (Serious accidents it is 1/10, minor crashes it’s 1/4). Data is peer reviewed,
I know of no data that suggests Waymo is worse than human drivers at hitting off leash dogs. Nor do I know of a blind spot for small objects in their soft-wear.
Focusing on single events like this is the same issue as all of the stories on “someone with the Covid-19 vacine, got Covid injuries”. Well yeh, it happens, but the rate of “side effects’ was 1/100 of the rate of serious issues with Covid.
Self driving cars are not flawless… but all of the data says Waymo is much safer. And they seem to be doing it safely getting better over time (unlike above mentioned N*z* company). And ultimately self driving cars are a godsend for an aging population…making them even more necessary.
So sorry an owner let their dog run off leash, there is no evidence that car was either (a) at fault, or (b) the average human would have done better.
Waymo can’t even be ticketed when it makes a major fail. Comparing the “statistics” that underlie that doesn’t even make sense when there can be zero possible consequences for an AI hivemind, vs a human who can be held accountable.
It’s statistical nonsense, and who exactly are these “peers”?
Most meat-driven accidents occur during rush hour commutes. Rush hour commute hours make up a much larger percentage of total meat mileage than robot mileage. Conversely, a much larger percentage of robot mileage occurs in the middle of the night, when packs of robots circle the streets together, when there are few meat-driven cars and even fewer pedestrians.
Ever wondered why packs of google cars circle the streets at 3am? What vital data are they accumulating that they don’t already have from circling the same streets over and over in the wee hours? It’s to accumulate “accident free” mileage to wave in the faces of innumerate rubes.
Unless the studies adjust for the different types of accumulated mileage (when, where, how fast, weather conditions, etc), they are garbage only good for white-washing the behemoth tech monopolies.
Waymo riders making excuses are a menace.
very sad, obviously.
all dogs outside should be leashed, however.
Waymo passengers are able to pull the car over with a simple push of a button on the tablet screen in the front or back seats – I would have done this immediately if I was in the Waymo.
Agree with the commenter who noted that ‘regular’ cars hitting animals do not get the news website treatment.
I’ve witnessed three dogs die after being struck by cars driven by humans and according to government stats, over 100,000 dogs are killed by cars in the US annually but none of that makes the news. Waymo hits one dog and it’s front page news?
Not even adjusting for what time of day the mileage is accumulated, total meat mileage vastly exceeds total robot mileage, by well over 100,000 times. If you’re going by just this one incident (and there are previous reports of google cars mangling furry quadrapeds), Waymos are statistically much more likely to kill pets.
The algorithm monopolies are counting on and exploiting your innumeracy. Math!
All three had a chance of being missed by humans, no chance of Waymo avoiding them because they aren’t required to attempt to see them, and do not.
I love reading Mission Local articles, but I get the sense that they have a bit of a bias against self-driving cars. I totally agree that incidents involving these vehicles should be reported and that companies like Waymo need to address those issues. But the way robot car accidents get so much more attention compared to accidents with human drivers kind of makes it feel like there’s an unfair focus on them. It would be helpful to compare these incidents to those involving human drivers, where the outcomes are often way worse but don’t get nearly as much coverage. Also, just like in the cat incident, the responsibility falls on the owner. If you don’t take the right precautions to keep your pet safe, unfortunate things are more likely to happen.
Trillion dollar corporations that put blue collar workers out of work really need yuppie support in local news sites, keep up the good work Lucas Lux.
From a New York Times opinion article :
“When compared to human drivers on the same roads, Waymo’s self-driving cars were involved in 91 percent fewer serious-injury-or-worse crashes and 80 percent fewer crashes causing any injury.”
Again, from Waymo internal opaque statistics.
You seem to be putting a lot of effort into this….do some research along with your hate.
Appears the NYT article is behind a paywall. Here’s the Waymo report of data?
https://waymo.com/safety/impact/
Waymo has provided over 100 million miles of service now. Compared to human driven vehicles: 91% fewer serious-injury crashes. 92% less pedestrians hit. 96% fewer injury crashes at intersections.
But an unleashed dog that was running in the road was hit so now we gotta shut it all down apparently.
Waymo also hides their actual statistics and isn’t transparent.
Regarding the comment – “made contact with a small, unleashed dog”, er…
a) the damn car ran over the dog and b) wtf has ‘unleash’ or ‘leashed’ got to doing with it? Its almost like Weymo are trying to absolve themselves, murica…
So let me guess, Weymo will only actually do something about this when its a human that is injured or killed…
I hate Waymos and loved KitKat, but it wasn’t Google’s fault that he died because that same day was the very first time out of hundreds of times I passed by that I saw him walking around under a parked car. I thought about getting on the driver’s side and yelling at him to scare him back up on the sidewalk, but I realized he would just ignore me, you can’t explain anything to a cat.
The problem is you can’t communicate with a Waymo “driver” in a split second the way you could with a human. (well maybe: let’s see: download the app, search for the communication feature; wait for chat–real or human–explain situation/location, wait for action, which is…what, in this case?”
Judge” “Your transmission will be impounded for 30 days; you can work off your sentence by driving around without picking up passengers for 45 days. Case closed.
Huh. Weird how the waymo rabids (whose go-to response is “human drivers maim and kill; robocars are safe”) choose to blame the unleashed dog. It’s both.
I don’t use this service!
Waymo doesn’t care about their idiotic customers.
I read the redditor’s other comments, basically glad he was able to continue his journey to the end and gave 1/2 a crap about the dog he helped kill by paying under-regulated robot surveillance to take jobs from humans who can see animals.
Absolute scumbag, typical Waymo customer.