Viral video appears to show Waymo stop in Miami traffic near police cruiser

A self-driving Waymo vehicle is drawing attention in Miami after a viral video appeared to show it stopping in traffic near a police cruiser.

The video appears to show a Waymo vehicle stopping in the roadway after a police cruiser with lights was driving nearby.

Miami Police said the car likely misinterpreted the situation as a traffic stop, and officers later coordinated directly with Waymo to address what happened.

Police said this kind of communication with the company is already part of how they handle incidents involving the driverless vehicles.

“If we have any instance where something happens like there was a vehicle that stopped in the Rickenbacker Causeway some time ago, we were in contact with them, we work together,” Miami Police spokesman Michael Vega said.

Vega said there’s a direct line between officers and a Waymo representative whenever something needs to be reviewed or corrected.

“There’s a representative that we call, and tell them ‘hey, we just had this occasion’ or ‘we had this happen’ and we can correct it and work together as a team to make it function,” he said.

Officers are trained to recognize the vehicles, but can still intervene if needed.

In the viral TikTok video, police said an officer did stop the vehicle and later reported the issue directly to Waymo.

“In this case the officer that actually did stop the vehicle at the end supposedly spoke with the representative from Waymo to bring up this issue and tell them ‘hey, this is what happened,'” Vega said. “As soon as I found out about the story, I contacted our Waymo representative…and told them ‘hey, look, this is something that’s going on TikTok just so that we can address it,’ and right away they were on the ball saying ‘Mike, I wasn’t aware of it, let’s work together.'”

And Miami is not the only place where autonomous vehicles have raised questions.

In other U.S. test markets, including in San Francisco and Los Angeles, Waymo vehicles have at times been reported stopping unexpectedly or reacting cautiously in complex traffic situations as the technology continues to be refined.

“That is something that Waymo has to work on with her system and do this software update,” Vega said.

Police said they are not seeing widespread issues locally, but said they continue to work closely with Waymo as the technology is tested on Miami roads.

NBC6 reached out to Waymo and haven’t heard back.