Report: Former Waymo Senior Engineer Changed Code to Follow "Forbidden Routes"

In the early days of what eventually became Waymo, Google's autonomous car division (known at the time as the "Chauffeur Project"), there were "more than a dozen accidents, at least three serious, "according to a new article in New Yorker.

The magazine describes Anthony Levandowski, the former Google engineer who was at the center of the Waymo v. Uber pursuit of trade secrets. According to the article, in 2011, Levandowski also modified the standalone software to take the Priuses prototype on "otherwise forbidden roads".

Quote an anonymous source, New Yorker reports that Levandowski was sitting behind the wheel as a security driver, along with Isaac Taylor, a Google executive. But while they were in the car, the Prius "accidentally stuck in another vehicle", a Camry.

As New Yorker wrote:

A human driver could easily handle the situation by slowing down and letting the Camry blend into the traffic, but Google's software was not prepared for this scenario. The cars continued to drive on the highway side by side. The Camry driver threw his car on his right shoulder. Then, apparently trying to avoid a railing, he went away; the Camry drove on the highway and in the median. Levandowski, who acted as a safety driver, made a significant departure to avoid a collision with the Camry, forcing Taylor to injure himself to the spine to such an extent that he finally had to undergo several surgeries .

It was apparently only one of many accidents that occurred at the beginning of the Chauffeur project:

According to former Google executives, at the beginning of the Chauffeur project, there had been more than a dozen accidents, at least three of which were serious. One of Google's first test cars, dubbed KITT, was stamped by a van after hard braking because it could not distinguish between a yellow light and a red light. Two of Google's employees who were in the car then requested medical treatment. A former Google executive told me that the van driver, whose family was in the truck, had no license, and asked the company not to contact the insurers. The back of KITT was crushed enough so that it was definitely removed from the road.

Prior to 2014, collisions of audio-visual companies were not mandatory under California state law.

When Ars contacted Waymo on Tuesday asking for information on the figure of "more than a dozen accidents," Johnny Luu, a spokesman, called almost immediately and asked to speak. When we refused, he later responded by email.

"You've probably already seen this CA DMV page with a list of all the reported collisions, including minor incidents such as a Waymo vehicle hitting a sidewalk (the damage was a deflated tire) or when another vehicle was trying to sneak between [part] from the road and scraped the mirror from our vehicle, "he writes.

"Regarding the report itself, we do not agree with New YorkerThe characterization of events nicknamed "Prius vs. Camry". "

When Ars specifically asked what Waymo did not agree with, Luu did not answer directly.

"New Yorker refused to provide us with a list of the incidents to which they referred, including the report of three serious accidents, "he continued. For our part, we have always complied with all reporting requirements, including those covering CA DMV regulations on stand-alone testing that came into effect in 2014. "

When we specifically asked about KITT, Luu said that "the authorities were called at the time of the accident".

"Internally, we document / monitor our test program on many fronts (as you can imagine), including collisions (we also track the number of disengagements, that is, where our driver takes relay during testing, etc. among other aspects of our testing program), "he continued.

This security report, dated 2018, does not appear to contain a detailed description of incidents that occurred before 2014. However, a Google report from June 2015 describes 12 incidents between 2010 and the report date, but does not seem to indicate that one of them was "serious".

Charles Duhigg, New Yorker reporter, did not immediately respond to Ars's request what constitutes "serious" in this context.

"The lack of respect for Anthony Levandowki's safety does not reflect the mission and values ​​we have at Waymo, where hundreds of engineers on our team work every day to bring this technology safely onto our roads, "Luu added by e-mail. "Our company was created to improve road safety, so we must meet high safety standards."

Levandowski did not respond to Ars's request for comment.

Waymo is expected to launch its on-demand self-service car service in Arizona in the coming months.