Early Saturday morning in Los Angeles, a Waymo robotaxi found itself at the center of a crash serious enough to send one person to the hospital in critical condition. The incident happened around 5:45 a.m. in the 1000 block of Venice Boulevard, a stretch of road that sees its fair share of traffic even at that early hour. LAPD responded quickly to reports of a two-vehicle collision involving the autonomous Waymo and one other car.
Details on exactly how the crash unfolded are still thin. As of this writing, authorities have not released information on what led up to the collision, including who or what was at fault. That’s not unusual in the immediate aftermath of a crash like this, especially one that’s still under active investigation, but it does mean we’re left without the full picture for now.
What we do know is that two people were injured in the crash, with one woman transported to the hospital in critical condition. That’s a sobering detail, and it’s worth pausing on rather than rushing past. Robotaxi crashes tend to generate headlines because of the novelty factor, but at the end of the day this was a real crash with real injuries, and that deserves to be treated with some weight…