Waymo Robotaxi Reportedly Obstructed Ambulance Responding to Austin Mass Shooting

March 1, 2026

A Waymo robotaxi was involved in an incident where it reportedly obstructed an ambulance during a mass shooting response in Austin, Texas. The vehicle stopped across the street while en route to pick up a passenger, briefly blocking the ambulance and causing a delay. An officer communicated with the driver through the vehicle's speaker system, and the robotaxi eventually moved into a parking garage. Fortunately, the incident did not significantly impact patient care or operations. ...through JOIN US.

Alleged deployer

waymo, robotaxi-operators, automated-driving-system-deployers

Alleged developer

waymo, automated-driving-system-developers

Alleged harmed parties

road-users, patients, emergency-medical-responders, emergency-medical-patients, austin-travis-county-ems

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Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.