A Waymo car has hit a dog in San Francisco just weeks after a beloved neighborhood cat was killed by one of the driverless taxis.
Waymo said in a statement that one of its robotaxis “made contact with a small, unleashed dog in the roadway.”
The incident happened Sunday night around 8 p.m. local time in the city’s Western Addition, according to local reports.
San Francisco news site Mission Local dug up a Reddit post from Sunday titled, “Our Waymo Just Ran Over a Dog.”
In the post, the Waymo passenger said, “Trying to call customer support. Called the police. Crowd is gathering not sure what to do.”
The passenger said in an update that Waymo had called to “to make sure we were okay.” The Reddit user said the company acknowledged the situation and that a “collision report” was filed. It’s not clear if the dog survived the collision.
“They said they are sending team members to area to look for the owner of the dog and to offer any veterinary or similar services,” the passenger said.
Waymo said in its public statement that it is “dedicated to learning from this situation and how we show up for our community as we continue improving road safety in the cities we serve.”
This isn’t the first animal-involved Waymo crash as of late. In October, a tabby cat called “KitKat” was killed by a robotaxi in San Francisco’s Mission District. KitKat was the pet mascot of Randa’s Market on 16th Street.
Waymo said in a statement shared by multiple outlets that the cat “darted under our vehicle as it was pulling away.”
“We send our deepest sympathies to the cat’s owner and the community who knew and loved him, and we will be making a donation to a local animal rights organization in his honor,” Waymo said.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk, whose electric vehicle company Tesla is working on its own robotaxi, wrote in an X post in the wake of KitKat’s death, “Many pets will be saved by autonomy.”
The Waymo passenger who took to Reddit Sunday admitted, “I not sure a human driver would have avoided the dog either though I do know that human would have responded differently to a ‘bump’ followed by a car full of screaming people.”
Waymo cars have been involved in over a dozen animal-involved crashes since mid-2021, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, citing National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data. Of the at least 14 animal collisions reported, five resulted in death.
While data on animal collisions caused by human drivers is scarce, an article from Indiana University Bloomington posted in November 2022 shared an estimate that 5.4 million cats are hit by cars every year. An overwhelming majority of these injured cats end up dying, according to the article.
