A self-driving car operated by Google spinoff Waymo last month hit and killed a dog on a San Francisco street.
An incident report with California authorities revealed an autonomous Jaguar I-Pace was driving on Toland Street, a city street near Waymo’s headquarters, hitting and killing a dog that ran into the street.
The car was operating in autonomous mode when the accident occurred. The human supervising driver did not see the dog, but the vehicle’s autonomous driving system did.
Even so, the car could not avoid the accident.
“On May 21st in San Francisco, a small dog ran in front of one of our vehicles with an autonomous expert present in the driver’s seat, and, unfortunately, contact was made,” Waymo said in a statement to TechCrunch.
“The investigation is still ongoing, but preliminary checks confirmed the system correctly identified the dog that ran out from behind a parked vehicle but was unable to avoid being hit. Our condolences to the owner of the dog.
“The trust and safety of the community we have is of the utmost importance to us and we will continue to look into this matter.”
This is not the first time that autonomous vehicles have encountered problems on public roads.
A self-driving Waymo vehicle earlier this year was caught on camera being pulled over by police after navigating the wrong road, and Tesla’s attempts to outfit its cars with self-driving technology have always made headlines.
Uber’s now-defunct self-driving program will be remembered for a 2018 crash that killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona.
According to police, 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg was crossing the street when she was hit by an autonomous test vehicle. He later died in hospital.