Crossing guards say driverless cars nearly hit them in crosswalks
In San Francisco, some school crossing guards say they have had to rush out of crosswalks to avoid being hit by self-driving cars.
In San Francisco, one of the nation’s largest testing grounds for driverless vehicles, some school crossing guards say they have had to rush out of crosswalks to avoid being hit by self-driving cars.
“I just don’t think it’s very safe,” said Theresa Dorn, a school crossing guard for 11 years. Dorn says driverless vehicles operated by Waymo, which was spun off from Google in 2016, have nearly struck her on three separate occasions over the past year while she was guiding children and their families along crosswalks.
“The parent grabbed the child, looked at the car, and there was nobody driving it,” she said.
NBC News and NBC Bay Area interviewed 30 crossing guards stationed at more than 20 schools across San Francisco. Nearly 25%, about 1 in 4, said they had experienced some type of “close call” in the crosswalk with a Waymo driverless car, where either the vehicle suddenly hit the brakes to prevent a collision, or the crossing guard rushed out of the way to avoid being hit.
“It did not recognize me in the intersection,” said Dorn, who added that each of her near misses occurred while she was holding up her stop sign in the crosswalk.
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