Okay, this is exactly the kind of thing that makes the whole “cars driving themselves” future feel a little bit less futuristic and a lot more like we are all beta testing it in public.
A Waymo autonomous vehicle ended up inside Denver’s South Pearl Street Farmers Market on Sunday morning while vendors were still setting up. According to market organizers, the barricades were already up and staff were already there.
And somehow, the car still got in.
The Waymo went around the barricades
Denver7 reports the vehicle went around barricades at Washington Street and Florida Avenue, turned north onto South Pearl Street, and continued through the market setup area.
Market organizers said those access points still have to let authorized vehicles through while vendors are unloading, which helps explain why the area wasn’t physically sealed off. But the Waymo was definitely not part of the setup plan.
The Gazette, citing 9NEWS, says the incident happened around 8:40 a.m. Assistant market manager Shari Wilkins said crews tried to stop the vehicle, and she later learned it continued down the road and passed a stop sign without stopping.
Thankfully, nobody was hurt
Once the vehicle was inside the market, organizers told Denver7 it was moving very slowly. Staff went ahead of it to warn vendors and crew members that it was coming through.
No one was injured.
That is obviously the best part of this story, because a farmers market full of tents, tables, people unloading boxes, and pedestrians is about the last place you want an autonomous car improvising its way through a temporary street closure.
Waymo says it is learning from what happened
Waymo told Denver7 that community trust and safety are top priorities and said the company is learning from the situation as it keeps working on road safety.
The timing is especially wild because Waymo’s Denver service is brand new. Waymo announced September 1 that it had started welcoming its first public riders in Denver, along with San Diego and Tampa.
So yes, Denver is very much still in the early days of having fully autonomous Waymo vehicles around town.
This is the weird part about self-driving cars in real cities
Permanent roads are one thing. A Sunday morning market is another. Streets change. Barricades move. Vendors are allowed through places the public cannot drive. Humans wave people around. Temporary signs show up overnight.
That kind of messy, hyper-local situation is exactly where autonomous driving gets interesting very fast.
And while nobody was hurt here, I can absolutely understand why vendors looked up from setting out sourdough and produce and thought, “Um. Why is there a robot car in the farmers market?”
Because, same.
