Are autonomous vehicles here to stay?

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- People complaining about autonomous vehicles are abundant on social media.

Recently, a woman shared a video on her TikTok reporting that her Waymo vehicle stopped under a MoPac overpass, and that the doors remained unlocked until she threatened to post the video online. This video got over 40,000 likes and has been reported by outlets across the U.S.

A spokesperson from Waymo told us vehicle doors remain unlocked at all times. The spokesperson also told us that negative experiences are actually pretty rare. In fact, since the partnership between Waymo and Uber launched in Austin during South by Southwest, 95% of the tens of thousands of riders ranked their trips with five stars, the spokesperson said.

“I would love to be able to say the Waymos are here to stay. I think the reality of it is that we're still on the edge -- very much on the edge of public acceptance," said Peter Stone, a robotics and machine learning researcher at the University of Texas at Austin.

Stone said the public has been exceedingly critical of autonomous vehicles, accepting nothing less than perfection.

"It's unfortunate, because what we should be comparing against is not perfection," Stone said. "What we should be comparing against is the status quo. How many accidents are there when people are driving, and, you know, the statistics are not good."

According to Austin's autonomous vehicle dashboard, there have only been 19 reported incidents involving Waymo vehicles so far in 2025. These incident reports were gathered by Austin Transportation and Public Works staff and from Austin 3-1-1 requests, according to the city. 

Stone said he doesn’t think autonomous vehicles will ever be perfect. But he said they are always learning and are likely to become even safer the longer they are on the road. 

“The advantage with autonomous cars is, unlike people, when there is a mistake, when they do come up to a puddle and then stop, that can be fixed in the software,” Stone said. 

“They will never be perfect. We'll never have zero accidents. But I think that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be on the road,” he continued.