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AI Transportation

Some Passengers Riding in Waymo's Driverless Cars Face Uncomfortable Situations (msn.com) 162

Posted by EditorDavid from the alone-in-the-dark dept.
Alphabet's Waymo robotaxis are providing "hundreds of thousands of driverless rides each month," reports the Washington Post. But as the robotaxi service expands in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Austin, some passengers "have found that traveling by robotaxi can make riders into sitting ducks for a new form of public harassment." The Washington Post spoke with four Waymo passengers, three of them women, who said they experienced harassment or what felt like threats to their safety from people who followed, obstructed or attempted to enter a driverless vehicle they were riding in...

Elliot, a tech worker in San Francisco, recalled in a phone interview a "scary" situation during a Waymo ride late one night in October. A pedestrian tried to enter the driverless vehicle as it waited at a red light. "Go away," Elliot yelled at the man as he knocked on the window before briefly flashing what looked like a knife, video of the incident viewed by The Post showed... In the moment, Elliot said, he wished someone could have "slammed on the gas and gotten away from this guy," adding that Waymo should change how its vehicles respond in such situations...

Madelline, a 25-year-old restaurant server in San Francisco, said that during a recent Waymo ride at around 2 a.m., the driverless vehicle had to stop after two drivers ahead began yelling at each other and throwing things out of their cars in what appeared to be a road rage dispute. The two cars blocked an intersection and one person got out of one of the vehicles. "I was definitely panicking a little bit," Madelline said, as her car waited for the road to clear instead of turning off as a human driver might do... She would like to have more control over a robotaxi's route but still prefers Waymo rides to using Uber or Lyft, whose drivers sometimes make her uncomfortable...

In September, Amina V. was on her way to a hair appointment when a man stepped in front of her robotaxi and the car stalled in the middle of the street. She already had been recording herself in the Waymo, so she turned the camera to capture the man hitting on her while her car stood frozen in San Francisco's Soma neighborhood.
And one Saturday night at 10:30 p.m., a tech worker named Stephanie took a driverless Waymo robotaxi with her sister, and reports confronting "several young men close to the robotaxi honking and yelling, 'Hey, ladies — you guys are hot.' If she or another human had been driving, it would have been easy to reroute the car to avoid leading the pursuers to her home. But she was scared and didn't know how to change the robot's path. She called 911, but a dispatcher said they couldn't send a police car to a moving vehicle, Stephanie recalled... [S]he said the other car gave up the chase when the Waymo was a minute from her house. She and her sister arrived home safely, though terrified. Stephanie didn't catch the car's license plate number, which the 911 dispatcher requested after her ride concluded. Waymo vehicles, like other driverless cars in development, use multiple cameras to help make sense of the world around them. But when she later asked the company for the car's video footage, hoping it had captured the license plate, Waymo declined to provide it, she said.

She would like closer coordination between Waymo and first responders and says she is now unsure about self-driving rides after dark. "I would feel safe taking it during the day," Stephanie said. But "at night, maybe I'm safer having someone else in the car just in case something happens."
A Waymo spokesperson told the Washington Post that their support agents will stay on the line with riders who call in about incidents like this, also working with law enforcement as appropriate — but the agents can't change the vehicle's specific route. (The Post adds that Waymo passengers "can tell a vehicle to pull over or change its next stop or destination using the Waymo app, or ask a support agent to make similar changes.")

Some Passengers Riding in Waymo's Driverless Cars Face Uncomfortable Situations More | Reply

Some Passengers Riding in Waymo's Driverless Cars Face Uncomfortable Situations

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  • Sounds like having a button would be good (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Firethorn ( 177587 ) on Monday December 23, 2024 @03:40AM (#65033913) Homepage Journal

    Hm... sounds like having an emergency button to hit would be good. Like the telephones in elevators, an early adoption of unmanned travel, or something like the onstar button in gm cars.

    Then give the agents more power, like switching to a remote driver.

    • Unless you are in an area with no signal.
      The car needs to do better without relying on remote operators.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by neaorin ( 982388 )

        Once D2C satellite service is available in earnest, this will no longer be a problem.
        Starlink D2C is already operational. Low bandwidth, but this is enough for signaling an emergency.
        ASTS will get there in 1-2 years as well.

      • When would a Waymo ever be in an area without signal? Seriously, at this time,these vehicles have a defined area they are allowed to operate. I'm pretty sure I cannot hail one to drive me to Yosemite.

      • Re: Sounds like having a button would be good (Score:4, Informative)

        by necro81 ( 917438 ) on Monday December 23, 2024 @08:11AM (#65034191) Journal

        Unless you are in an area with no signal. The car needs to do better without relying on remote operators.

        There are no driverless taxi services operating in the US without always-on connectivity. Where they exist, it's only within a handful of dense urban areas. If you know differently, please provide links.

      • These are robottaxis, not personal vehicles, as stated they are limited to specific locations that do have good signal.
        Now, a tower could go out or be overwhelmed, but that would affect calling 911 as well, and a car can have a much bigger antenna placed in a better location with more power. Sort of like the cell phone repeater I installed in my truck for North Dakota, where I often only had one bar. The extra height and size of antenna gave me drastically more range.
        Basically, don't give up on a 90% solu

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

      sounds like having an emergency button to hit would be good

      There's an emergency button on your phone.

      Unfortunately for the hypothetical you, the nearest cops are probably already busy harassing a homeless veteran for sitting two inches past the allowable part of the sidewalk.

      • My phone doesn't have an explicit emergency button. The benefits of a button in the car is that it can connect you to a waymo specific operator immediately, and pass them information like who you are, where you are, which car you're in, where you were picked up, where your destination is, etc... They should be able to immediately access information from the car.
        If I call 911, they're still going to need to call Waymo.
        Basically, it seems much faster to be able to hit the button, go "they're trying to break

        • My phone doesn't have an explicit emergency button.

          It probably doesn't have a dedicated emergency button, and it may not even have a physical one, but I assure you that unless it is some hacked up Linux jobber with a custom interface it does have one.

          It's true that an in-car emergency button would possibly produce a more targeted response, but what is the response supposed to be? If it's something that could get the company which owns the vehicle into legal trouble, they will be hesitant to use it.

    • and will having that button make the passenger be on the line for getting an DUI?

    • Re:Sounds like having a button would be good (Score:5, Informative)

      by PCM2 ( 4486 ) on Monday December 23, 2024 @01:49PM (#65034979) Homepage

      You can't even hail a Waymo without using the app on your phone, let alone unlock the door when it arrives. Hence, you will not be riding in one without a phone and will always have the option to call 911. You can also call 911 from within the Waymo app, and dispatchers will connect 911 operators with the actual vehicle you are in (along with precise location information). Finally, all cars have a "Call support" button on the passenger interface inside the car that will connect you with human support.

      • The human support is the part I was thinking about - they'd be the ones with the power to do things with the car like changing the destination. I don't want people to have to be fumbling with their phone in an emergency situation, or at least have an alternative.
        911 might be able to get the police there faster, but would have a harder time controlling the car, so best to have both parties on the line - 911 and Waymo support.

    • Hm... sounds like having an emergency button to hit would be good. Like the telephones in elevators, an early adoption of unmanned travel, or something like the onstar button in gm cars.

      Then give the agents more power, like switching to a remote driver.

      Considering the potential for lag and bandwidth issues and the restricted visibility a remote driver is a great way to end up running over someone and generating a fatality.

      A better approach would be an emergency button where a remote agent has options including:
      - Telling the car to get out of there.
      - Patching into a loudspeaker telling folks they're being recorded and to bugger off.
      - Calling the cops if necessary.

      • They already have those options, well, maybe not the 2nd, but the people in the car should be able to yell out.

        The remote driver is where it's serious enough that vehicular homicide might be a valid option vs losing the passengers.

        • They already have those options, well, maybe not the 2nd

          From the summary:
          She called 911, but a dispatcher said they couldn't send a police car to a moving vehicle, Stephanie recalled.

          and

          A Waymo spokesperson told the Washington Post that their support agents will stay on the line with riders who call in about incidents like this, also working with law enforcement as appropriate — but the agents can't change the vehicle's specific route. (The Post adds that Waymo passengers "can tell a vehicle to pull over or change its next stop or destination using the Way

          • Well, looking at your very quotes:
            "a dispatcher said they couldn't send a police car to a moving vehicle" - this was a 911 dispatcher, not a Waymo support agent.
            "also working with law enforcement as appropriate" - to me this means calling the cops.
            "ask a support agent to make similar changes." - the support agent can change the destination, and thus the route.

            "Get out of there" is hard to do if people are blocking the car in. Thus a remote driver to assess the situation and make the "least bad" decision.

            • Well, looking at your very quotes:
              "a dispatcher said they couldn't send a police car to a moving vehicle" - this was a 911 dispatcher, not a Waymo support agent.
              "also working with law enforcement as appropriate" - to me this means calling the cops.

              A Waymo support agent talking to the 911 dispatcher could have a script for dealing with that exact scenario.

              "ask a support agent to make similar changes." - the support agent can change the destination, and thus the route.

              "Get out of there" is hard to do if people are blocking the car in.

              Again, in this case "blocking in" could simply be the person standing too close so the Waymo stops. And "changing destinations" probably means the Waymo has to drive forward. Backing up and doing a U-turn is a manoeuvre they may want to enable in only supervised special circumstances.

              My mentioning the remote driver potentially deliberately running people over was in response to your "great way to end up running over someone", that could be an intended option if it is bad enough. I know that there's a whole range of stuff possible before that.

              The point is that the remote driver isn't sitting in some perfect real time driving simulator. They have grainy video,

              • A Waymo support agent talking to the 911 dispatcher could have a script for dealing with that exact scenario.

                Probably should, though figuring out that they need one might take an incident happening. Safety regulations are generally written in blood, after all.

                Again, in this case "blocking in" could simply be the person standing too close so the Waymo stops.

                Well yes. Which means that getting the person OUT of the situation might involve moving the car despite the risk of it hitting or running somebody over. Personally, I think that having a human taking closer control is for the best in that situation.

                The point is that the remote driver isn't sitting in some perfect real time driving simulator. They have grainy video, a potentially laggy connection, and a poor understanding of blind spots. The remote driver is much more likely to cause an accident than the Waymo.

                Which is why we don't have them take over unless it's something that the self-driving system can't handle. T

    • Or throw the creeps in jail.

  • I guess nobody reports (Score:3)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Monday December 23, 2024 @03:44AM (#65033917)

    the sicko, violent or perv taxi drivers anymore. There aren't many but they exist too, and have existed ever since taxis have been a thing.

    The robot taxis come with their own set of new problems. That's why you hear about them.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by 2TecTom ( 311314 )

      I'd suggest that cabbies who have to get police checks are a better bet than uber or lyft drivers who do not

      not to mention how ridesharing companies have no local representation and care far less than local cab companies ever did

      unethical people get the unethical businesses they deserve

      • I'd suggest that cabbies who have to get police checks are a better bet than uber or lyft drivers who do not

        not to mention how ridesharing companies have no local representation and care far less than local cab companies ever did

        unethical people get the unethical businesses they deserve

        I gather that you are deeply confused, as you are suggesting that taxi monopolies are somehow more ethical than rideshares. The taxi business is deeply corrupt, and makes cab rides much more expensive than they have any need to be. There wouldn't even be rideshares if that weren't the case.

        I wonder how many millions of dollars it takes to get a New York taxi medallion, these days...

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by 2TecTom ( 311314 )

          I gather that you are deeply confused, as you are suggesting that taxi monopolies are somehow more ethical than rideshares. The taxi business is deeply corrupt, and makes cab rides much more expensive than they have any need to be. There wouldn't even be rideshares if that weren't the case.

          I wonder how many millions of dollars it takes to get a New York taxi medallion, these days...

          your need to be insulting and abusive speaks volumes about you, the truth hurts so you needed to lash out in retaliation

          medallions were never worth that much, people have every right to expect a decent income, even cab drivers

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by piojo ( 995934 )

            your need to be insulting and abusive speaks volumes about you, the truth hurts so you needed to lash out in retaliation

            Where exactly was the insult and abuse?

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by 2TecTom ( 311314 )

              Where exactly was the insult and abuse?

              Do you call people 'deeply confused' often? Insults are abusive, especially in public.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by piojo ( 995934 )

                Noted! I didn't realize someone could consider "deeply confused" to be abusive. I wonder what the kindest way is to tell someone they are completely wrong is? Maybe "I'm sorry but..." used to be nice but it lost its meaning as it got cliched.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by 2TecTom ( 311314 )

                  the way to do this is to offer a counter-argument but since you haven't, it's clear your abusively trolling

    • violent or perv robotic taxi drivers (Score:4, Funny)

      by stooo ( 2202012 ) on Monday December 23, 2024 @04:53AM (#65033989) Homepage

      Wait until AI generates sicko, violent or perv robotic taxi drivers

    • The summary did mention human taxi drivers: "She would like to have more control over a robotaxi's route but still prefers Waymo rides to using Uber or Lyft, whose drivers sometimes make her uncomfortable..."

  • Police report... and... be armed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gavron ( 1300111 ) on Monday December 23, 2024 @06:15AM (#65034053)

    If you're driving around in a vehicle you don't have any control of, that can stop anywhere at anytime for any pre-programmer reason...

    1. Carry a firearm or other defensive weapon. Hope not to have to use it. If you do, be glad you have it.

    2. If waymo won't release pictures with license plates or pictures of people WHO CAUSE YOU HARM or THREATEN YOUR LIFE OR SAFETY file a police complaint and let them say "no" to the local prosecutor.

    That won't last long.

    Any new or quote unquote "disruptive" technology has "disruptions" that occur outside of their stock value to idiot shareholders (Musk - talking to you, moron). They are also disruprive to normal people (which they call "passengers" as if somehow hundreds of millions of us no longer have any rights because we clicked on "I agree" on Waymo's EULA.)

    Fuck waymo. Fuck EULAs. Fuck companies that put real people in these scenarios and then refuse to help (useless) law enforcement. And Fuck Musk. Richest moron in the world. Imagine how it would be to have more money than anyone... but to be a moron. Sad. Flowers for Algernon.

    • "Musk - talking to you, moron"

      What the fuck does Musk have to do with this? Waymo is a *direct competitor* to Tesla, AFAIK.

      Is Musk Derangement Syndrome now a thing?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by narcc ( 412956 )

        Yes. It's been a thing for a while now. The meme is "weird nerds" jumping to that dipshit's defense at every opportunity.

        Relax, weird nerds. He's just a rich asshole with serious self-image issues. He pretends to have an education that he verifiably does not have. Despite having adequate resources, he hasn't taken steps to earn the credentials he so clearly wishes he had. We can only speculate as to why, but my guess would be that he doesn't think he could do the work and doesn't want to embarrass him

        • " He pretends to have an education that he verifiably does not have. "
          Where?
          When?
          Has he called himself "Dr Musk"?
          I don't ever see him as presenting himself as an entrepreneur, who ROUTINELY insists he's successful by hiring people "smarter than him".
          Where do you get this bizarre claim to credentialism?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by narcc ( 412956 )

            Oh my... You poor deluded sycophant...

            He claims to have a BS in Physics. He does not.

            He claims to have dropped out of a Ph.D. program at Stanford. That didn't happen.

            Find better heroes. Better yet, stop worshiping heroes altogether. You're not 12-years-old anymore. It's long-past time to move on.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by theCoder ( 23772 )

              I was curious, as I had never heard about these educational claims, so I did some brief research. See Wikipedia on Musk's Education [wikipedia.org]. There does seem to be some conflicting claims of when degrees were awarded, but it appears the University of Pennsylvania did give him Bachelor's degrees in Physics and Economics. He was also admitted to a graduate program at Stanford, but did not enroll. That probably falls short of what most people think of as "dropping out" (i.e., going then leaving), but it's not too f

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by narcc ( 412956 )

                The physics degree seems to have happened long after he claimed, and after he gave the school quite a bit of money. He was never admitted to Stanford. That's a flat-out lie.

    • Imagine how it would be to have more money than anyone

      The money is fake and valueless. It has power over the likes of you and me, but it has zero effect on those who actually run this world.

    • 1. Typical American response: feel the need to carry a gun, nothing like escalating a situation that so far has resulted in no one getting so much as touched to potentially ending up with someone shot and killed.
      2. No one has caused anyone harm which is why no license plate files were released. Turns out calling someone sexy is not grounds for the police to start investigating.

      The only thing clear here is that you shouldn't own a gun, you're way too unhinged not to shoot someone for doing something like pas

  • "Keep Summer safe"

  • Theoretically, the car could have a "Get me the F out of here!" button that makes it takes immediate evasive/self-protecting action. Probably they could even execute on it, too.

    The problem is that the legal standing of a fully-driverless car is still hypothetical and never been tested in court. Even in case of your regular accident, assigning responsibility is not easy, let alone in such a nuanced case.

  • So, these people use Waymo because there is no creepy driver, but they wish there was a driver to get the vehicle out of situations that an autonomous vehicle can't handle.
  • Sounds more like San Francisco has a sexual assault problem.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by narcc ( 412956 )

      It's a problem everywhere, though if you're trying to make a stupid political point, you might want to pick something else. Per capita Child Sexual Assault is far worse in red states than blue states [hhs.gov]. I'd need to do the actual analysis, but rape seems to follow the same pattern [worldpopul...review.com]. Red states also seem to have a serious murder problem [thirdway.org].

      I'm sorry that reality doesn't conform to your preferred narrative. It must be hard for you.

      • I don't get your argument. What are red & blue states? Are there other colour states too?

        TFA didn't mention any children getting sexually assaulted either. I assumed they meant adult passengers like the one they interviewed. Have I missed something?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by narcc ( 412956 )

          I don't get your argument. What are red & blue states?

          You are too stupid for this discussion.

          Have I missed something?

          Obviously. Find a trusted adult to help you.

          • TFA doesn't mention sexually assaulting children. Why did you immediately leap to that & why have you made some spurious correlation between that & the apparent colour of some states? From the lack of context & polemic nature of your comments I think I can safely assume that your from the USA or at least very strongly influenced by its culture & ways of perceiving the world?

            If you want to make some kind of connection between Waymo cars, sexual assault in San Francisco, child sexual assaul

  • Fuck'em

  • every time you get into a car, driver, passenger or passenger with AI driving, you put yourself in a uncomfortable situation that is beyond your control. Some of these uncomfortable situations we even call "accidents" that were unintended and sometimes well beyond anyone's control to prevent.

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