City leaders in Austin, Texas want to meet with Waymo, following an incident involving one of the rideshare company's autonomous vehicles earlier this month. A Waymo autonomous vehicle briefly blocked an ambulance responding to a deadly mass shooting in downtown Austin, drawing attention to how driverless vehicles behave around emergency responders. Several Austin City Council members have since written a letter to Waymo representatives and invited them to a joint meeting of the Austin City Council's Public Safety Committee and Mobility Committee to discuss the incident. The meeting is set for April 29th.
According to Fox News Digital, the incident involving a Waymo vehicle occurred around 2 a.m. Sunday, March 3, on West Sixth Street in Austin’s busy entertainment district, where a shooting outside Buford’s Backyard Beer Garden left three people dead, including the suspected gunman, and wounded at least 14 others.
Video recorded by a bystander and circulated on social media shows a Waymo robotaxi stopped sideways in the roadway as an ambulance approached the scene with emergency lights activated. In the video, witnesses can be heard yelling for the vehicle to move as emergency crews tried to get through.
Moments later, a police officer arrived and entered the vehicle, which is capable of being manually driven when necessary. The officer then moved the car out of the roadway so the ambulance and other emergency vehicles could proceed.
Waymo told Fox News Digital that the vehicle had been summoned by a passenger during the chaotic moments following the shooting and was navigating toward a pickup location. The company said the car encountered a blocked roadway and began performing a U-turn maneuver when it came across emergency vehicles.
According to the company, the vehicle briefly yielded before the officer moved it from the roadway.
Officials with Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services said the brief delay did not affect the outcome for victims. EMS Chief Robert Luckritz said more than 20 emergency units responded to the incident and crews arrived quickly after the first call for help.
Luckritz told reporters that emergency responders reached the scene within roughly 57 seconds of the call and that the autonomous vehicle incident was not believed to have interfered with patient care.
He also noted that local agencies regularly coordinate with companies testing and operating autonomous vehicles in Austin and that officials planned to follow up with Waymo to review the incident and determine whether improvements could be made.
Authorities said the shooting unfolded in the early morning hours in the crowded nightlife area. Police responding to the scene shot and killed the suspected gunman after he opened fire outside the bar, according to reports.
Investigators are continuing to examine the circumstances surrounding the attack, including possible motives.
The incident has renewed questions about how autonomous vehicles react in unpredictable emergency situations, particularly when first responders arrive with flashing lights and sirens.
Waymo, the self-driving technology company owned by Alphabet, operates driverless ride-hailing services in several U.S. cities and has been expanding its presence in Austin, which has become a major testing ground for autonomous vehicles.
Company officials said incidents like the one in Austin provide valuable real-world data that helps engineers refine the technology so vehicles can better handle complicated traffic situations.
While officials emphasized that the vehicle’s brief obstruction did not affect emergency response times, the widely shared video has intensified scrutiny of how autonomous systems perform in real-world emergencies — an issue regulators, city leaders, and technology companies will likely continue to examine as driverless vehicles become more common on American roads.
