# Cyclist's Close Call With Waymo Doesn't Shake Faith in Autonomous Vehicles
Matthew Sparkes, a New Scientist journalist, nearly collided with a Waymo autonomous vehicle while cycling through London, yet remains optimistic about driverless car technology despite the incident.
The near miss highlights a persistent tension in autonomous vehicle deployment. Waymo operates robotaxi services in multiple U.S. cities and has expanded testing internationally. These vehicles use lidar, radar, and camera systems to detect obstacles, including cyclists and pedestrians. The incident suggests that even sophisticated sensor arrays can occasionally fail to anticipate human behavior or respond appropriately in complex urban environments.
Sparkes acknowledges the close call represents a genuine safety concern but distinguishes between isolated incidents and systemic failure. He argues that autonomous vehicles will ultimately prove safer than human drivers, whose reaction times, attention spans, and judgment vary considerably. Traffic fatalities caused by human error remain far higher than any autonomous vehicle accident rate to date.
The encounter raises practical questions about the transition period as driverless cars integrate with existing traffic. Cyclists operate in legal gray zones in many cities, and autonomous systems must account for behavior that falls outside standard road rules. Waymo's vehicles have demonstrated competence in controlled conditions, yet real-world deployment exposes edge cases that testing cannot fully predict.
Sparkes positions his experience within a broader adoption curve. Early autonomous vehicle deployments will inevitably produce incidents. These failures, when documented and analyzed, feed back into system improvements. The technology companies and regulators involved must balance rapid innovation against public safety demands.
His optimism rests on the directional trend rather than perfect current performance. As machine learning algorithms process more real-world driving data, corner cases become less frequent. The journalist's willingness to remain supportive despite a frightening personal experience suggests that informed observers recognize driverless car development as an