Former Top Waymo Engineer Altered Code To Go on 'Forbidden Routes', Report Says

In the early days of what ultimately became Waymo, Google's self-driving car division (known at the time as 'Project Chauffeur'), there were 'more than a dozen accidents, at least three of which were serious,' according to a new article in The New Yorker. From a report: The magazine profiled Anthony Levandowski, the former Google engineer who was at the center of the Waymo v. Uber trade secrets lawsuit. According to the article, back in 2011, Levandowski also modified the autonomous software to take the prototype Priuses on 'otherwise forbidden routes.' Citing an anonymous source, The New Yorker reports that Levandowski sat behind the wheel as the safety driver, along with Isaac Taylor, a Google executive. But while they were in the car, the Prius 'accidentally boxed in another vehicle,' a Camry. As The New Yorker wrote: 'A human driver could easily have handled the situation by slowing down and letting the Camry merge into traffic, but Google's software wasn't prepared for this scenario. The cars continued speeding down the freeway side by side. The Camry's driver jerked his car onto the right shoulder. Then, apparently trying to avoid a guard rail, he veered to the left; the Camry pinwheeled across the freeway and into the median. Levandowski, who was acting as the safety driver, swerved hard to avoid colliding with the Camry, causing Taylor to injure his spine so severely that he eventually required multiple surgeries.' This was apparently just one of several accidents in Project Chauffeur's early days.

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