Waymo Austin public safety concerns rise

It’s been just over a year since Waymo rolled out its partnership with Uber, and its presence has rapidly expanded across Austin. There are now about 300 of the sleek white vehicles with black spinning tops driving around city streets, a level of ubiquity the company asserts is improving safety for pedestrians and drivers.

Not everyone is sold. Some city leaders say the vehicles can, at times, hinder public safety. In the wake of several high-profile incidents over the past 12 months — including the recent death of a beloved duck, an incident in which a Waymo vehicle blocked an ambulance responding to the shooting at Buford’s Backyard Beer Garden and reports of autonomous vehicles unsafely passing school buses — skepticism is growing about whether the technology is ready for widespread use. City leaders also say the companies can be opaque about how their systems operate. The latest example: Waymo declined the city’s request to attend a Wednesday special meeting to discuss public safety.

“Thanks for printing out the ‘Reserved for Waymo’ signs,” Council Member Zo Qadri said, referencing empty chairs in front of the dais. “Waymo sadly did not show up.”

Despite growing skepticism at City Hall, local lawmakers have limited authority after Texas banned cities from regulating autonomous vehicles in 2017, leaving oversight largely in the hands of the state. However, additional oversight will come at the end of May, when a new state law goes into effect requiring companies to obtain Texas Department of Motor Vehicles authorization before operating commercially.

“No tech works perfectly, but we’ve managed to keep airline accidents down very low, and that’s because we’ve had a lot of time and experience to perfect, or nearly perfect the system,” said Missy Cummings, director of George Mason University’s Mason Autonomy & Robotics Center, a research hub on autonomous systems. “We’re still years, if not decades, away from something similar to happen to self-driving cars.”

“Austin is being treated as a lab experiment that they didn’t sign up for,” Cummings said. “It’s just a matter of time until someone’s killed.”

How autonomous vehicles took hold in Austin

While the 2025 partnership with Uber accelerated Waymo’s expansion, the company has been rolling out vehicles in Austin since 2023. Waymo is now the dominant operator in the city, but at least five other companies also have vehicles on Austin streets, though not all companies are currently offering rides.

Autonomous vehicles’ introduction has not been without its setbacks. Cruise cars were once everywhere, but after many well-documented incidents, the company suspended its nationwide operations in October 2023 amid eroding public trust.

Despite lacking regulatory authority, the city launched an autonomous vehicle dashboard in 2023 to track incidents involving the vehicles and better understand emerging issues.

Reported incidents have steadily increased since 2023, likely driven in part by the growing number of vehicles on the road, with about 270 total since the dashboard’s launch. Reports include safety concerns, vehicles blocking traffic, failing to comply with police direction and ignoring school bus stop signs.

Waymo points to safety record

“We’ve driven over 200 million miles [across all cities],” David Margines, director of product management at Waymo, told Austin Current. “We have demonstrated a 92% reduction in serious injury collisions as compared to human drivers on the same roads and in the same geographies.”

In one of the most recent high-profile incidents, a Waymo vehicle blocked an ambulance responding to the March 1 shooting at Buford’s that left three people dead and more than a dozen injured. Public safety officials said the delay did not hurt emergency medical response, but the incident nonetheless raised significant safety concerns and prompted Austin City Council members to send a formal letter to the company seeking ways to prevent similar situations.

Margines called the event “anomalous,” and said the company reviews such incidents to prevent recurrence and maintain community trust.

“We recognize that we need to build and maintain the trust in the communities that we operate in,” Margines said. He added that after incidents like the ambulance case, the company evaluates whether “there are things that we can do better, whether we can operate faster and basically get out of the way of emergency vehicles.”

Margines said Waymo is among the safest and most transparent autonomous vehicle companies, saying the company is more forthcoming about collisions than its competitors.

“We are tremendously proud of our track record here in Texas,” Margines said. “When we look at the big picture, people’s lives are being improved because Waymo is out there on the road.”

Austin leaders push for safeguards

Austin City Council Member Paige Ellis, who chairs Austin’s Mobility Committee, said she wants to see more transparency from all autonomous vehicle companies. Public officials have recently criticized Waymo for not providing enough detail about who its remote assistance operators are, their level of training and where they are located.

“Personally, I would love to have more information about those questions,” Ellis told Austin Current. “We as government officials, we thrive on transparency… We need our information to be available to the public. We want people to have information and answers, and private companies don’t necessarily have that charge.”

At the Wednesday special meeting, public safety leaders outlined several issues first responders have encountered in recent months, including autonomous vehicles not responding to emergency workers’ hand signals, remaining on roadways during severe weather events, requiring manual relocation during active emergency scenes and situations in which intoxicated passengers fall asleep during rides and do not wake up.

“The question is not if this is going to turn into a deadly situation but when,” Ellis said at the meeting.

While Austin currently lacks the authority to regulate the vehicles, public safety officials questioned whether future policies might restrict operations during severe weather or allow the city to recoup costs when first responders are required to manually move vehicles blocking active scenes.

The city’s government relations department expressed support for future legislation aimed at strengthening safety requirements.

Austin should do “everything that we can to be a city that does welcome new technology,” Ellis said, “but, first and foremost, has to put our top priority as the life, health and safety of the folks in Austin, Texas.”