Dozens of Robotaxi Riders Are Falling Asleep, Sparking Frantic Calls For Emergency Services (straitstimes.com) 101
"If tired or wasted passengers fall asleep in a traditional taxi or rideshare, the driver can shout or shake them awake," reports Bloomberg. "Not so in a robotaxi..."
Ditto Kasendar remembers soft music drifting from the robotaxi's speakers as he rode home late at night from a friend's birthday party in 2025. The next moment, Los Angeles firefighters were opening the door and asking if he was OK. His six-minute trip had ended nearly an hour before. A remote Waymo assistant, dialling in through the car's speakers, repeatedly tried to rouse him and finally called 911 when he wouldn't stir...
Kasendar's robocab nap was, unfortunately, not an isolated incident. As companies like Alphabet and Tesla bring self-driving taxis to more cities, the messier aspects of serving unpredictable humans are becoming harder to ignore. Passengers are falling asleep, spilling drinks, dropping food, vomiting, experiencing medical emergencies and, in at least two instances, giving birth in the cars. They stumble out of the vehicles and forget to close the doors, forcing the operators to pay nearby gig workers to do it.
These seemingly minor nuisances are becoming a drain on municipal resources and complicating the roll-out of robotaxi service. So many robotaxi customers have nodded off in the midst of a ride that Austin police and firefighters even have a name for the incidents: "sleepers". The Texas capital recorded 99 such calls in Waymo's first nine months of service there, said Roger Patterson, a commander with Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services... Remote assistants monitoring the cars try talking through the speakers and checking on passengers with interior cameras. But if they get no response, company protocols often require them to call 911. And first responders have to assume the worst. Austin dispatchers treat an incident as a potential heart attack if the remote assistant can't tell whether the passenger is breathing, Patterson said. In the end, only about 3% of such calls require transporting the passenger to a hospital, he said. But the incidents tie up personnel who might be needed elsewhere.
Kasendar's robocab nap was, unfortunately, not an isolated incident. As companies like Alphabet and Tesla bring self-driving taxis to more cities, the messier aspects of serving unpredictable humans are becoming harder to ignore. Passengers are falling asleep, spilling drinks, dropping food, vomiting, experiencing medical emergencies and, in at least two instances, giving birth in the cars. They stumble out of the vehicles and forget to close the doors, forcing the operators to pay nearby gig workers to do it.
These seemingly minor nuisances are becoming a drain on municipal resources and complicating the roll-out of robotaxi service. So many robotaxi customers have nodded off in the midst of a ride that Austin police and firefighters even have a name for the incidents: "sleepers". The Texas capital recorded 99 such calls in Waymo's first nine months of service there, said Roger Patterson, a commander with Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services... Remote assistants monitoring the cars try talking through the speakers and checking on passengers with interior cameras. But if they get no response, company protocols often require them to call 911. And first responders have to assume the worst. Austin dispatchers treat an incident as a potential heart attack if the remote assistant can't tell whether the passenger is breathing, Patterson said. In the end, only about 3% of such calls require transporting the passenger to a hospital, he said. But the incidents tie up personnel who might be needed elsewhere.
No One Could Have Known? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:No One Could Have Known? (Score:4, Informative)
They probably would only call 911 if they were afraid they'd get in trouble for touching or mildly shaking a passenger, otherwise a human is way more adept than a video+AI at determining if someone's just passed out/sleeping or having a heart attach.
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Touching your passenger has all sorts of potential legal risks, even if most drivers don't realize it.
Self-driving taxis can just build a vibration function into the passenger seats. Once the passenger takes more than 5 minutes to leave, they should flag the ride for a human to check what's going on through the cameras.
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"Have you got room for a bottle of Bundy and two dozen cans?"
"Sure"
"bleeuuurggghhh!!!"
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They need a self cleaning system like those public bathrooms where the inside is hosed down between users, and anyone who fails to exit promptly is washed out.
The obvious solution is an eject button. (Score:3)
But then you also need to add a retractable roof.
Re:The obvious solution is an eject button. (Score:5, Funny)
Who says? I'm sure the impact will wake them up.
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In some cities another body on the sidewalk might not even raise an eyebrow.
Ancient wisdom from my dad, in an age before cell phones...
"In New York they don't want to get involved, but they'll call you an ambulance after they turn the corner. In Chicago they didn't see nothing! Even if they had to step over you."
I've heard both cities have changed a lot in the last 60 years, though.
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Q: I never joke about my work, 007.
Re:The obvious solution is an alarm! (Score:2)
Possible solution (Score:5, Interesting)
Shaking seats, loud sirens, maybe even a little water spray?
Re: Possible solution (Score:2)
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Or something more powerful: Electrical shocks, release angry bees and ants, etc. /s
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Shaking seats, loud sirens, maybe even a little water spray?
Or, like a good Johnny Cab, self-destruct while trying to murder the fare.
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Yes, but also more instrumentation. Ought to be possible to detect if the person is breathing. If they are, its *probably* not an emergency. If they aren’t it certainly is. If they are breathing, and the shaking seat, alarm, etc. don’t do the trick, the authorities can be notified with the status so dispatch can triage appropriately.
False alarm handling (Score:5, Insightful)
I've worked on police systems that are connected to home alarms. The false alarms got problematic, so police agencies started a 'one false alarm, then you get billed' policy.
Very shortly thereafter, there were multiple vendors offering tracking and billing solutions that would integrate with police call taker / incident tracking systems.
It seems like this would work exceptionally well for robotaxies - give them an economic incentive to find a way to confirm someone is in actual distress prior to calling 911. Like maybe a remotely activated just-below-hearing-damage alarm in the car if you're not moving within 2 minutes of the car pulling up at your destination.
But then there's another fancy option - the car could drive towards the nearest hospital ER or EMS station during the 911 call, with the service's agent reporting location and redirecting or stopping the car if so instructed by the 911 operator.
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The only way I can see that working is if the ambulance operator is allowed to give them a kickback.
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Need to add loud and visual alerting (Score:2)
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Re:Drunk (Score:4, Interesting)
Why do I need to be awake (Score:2, Insightful)
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So you can get out when reaching your destination. Of course, if you're just going to be sleeping in the Jonny Cab then I'm sure they can keep the meter running.
A Joy Buzzer Under Every Seat! (Score:3)
Re:A Joy Buzzer Under Every Seat! (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's very easy to close the doors on a car automatically. Just pull forward slightly and brake hard .. the momentum will close the door. It works every time on any car. I can't believe the geniuses at Waymo don't know that.
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Even if you were right, it probably would work only if the door is very open, but not ajar.
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Try it, then comment.
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Powered doors cost more, which would reduce profits. We can't have that.
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Giving birth in a driverless taxi (Score:5, Funny)
"I think I'll name him Otto Pilot."
Make them pay (Score:5, Insightful)
Except for the birth situations, all these taxi services should charge these people for the length of time they're in the vehicle (if they've fallen asleep and the alarms don't wake them), any spills/damage they create, and any time someone else has to be called to close the door.
You're occupying a taxi (in the first situation), damaging company property, and causing additional charges.
If nothing else, profits will go up.
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I would assume that they do this.
Emergency services should also be billing the taxi operator. Which, I am sure that they do this as well.
I certainly got billed by MNDOT when my car went off the road after hitting an ice patch on I35. $800 to re-sod (nevermind that I was in the same ditch along with half a dozen other cars and semi tractors).
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I'm assuming MNDOT means Minnesota. It definitely gets cold enough there sometimes for salt to be ineffective. Sand works on off-ramps and bridges but on the main driving lanes, it will just get blown off by moving traffic.
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Not disagreeing with you on the rest. Just filling in why the road might not be salted.
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Uber got popular because it offered a A to B prepaid service, with a lot of small token gestures such as properly identifying the car and wait queues, especially if you helpful as a app service if you went to a different country.
This is now a competing service which is trying to mimic the downstream of this market change, which what that brings to the table. The fact they are writing about it, means whoever cooked up the scheme did not think it trough. No self closing doors?
I had an alarm clock from the 1980's (Score:3, Insightful)
Simple LED display, radio, and the alarm was just a square wave BEEP BEEP BEEP at 90 dB like the house was on fire. I got it for $5 at a yard sale in the 1990's and that was my go-to for waking up my teenage self.
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Also, add to the terms of service policy that after N minutes grace period, there will be a per minute fee while occupying the vehicle.
Calling 911 for a non-emergency because the robotaxi can't figure out how to run its own business is just a way for a wealthy corporation to burn taxpayer money. I shouldn't have to pay more taxes (or get less services) because Waymo is incompetent.
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Your grace period idea has merit, but there will be a lot of things to work out. What about people heading to the airport with their family and a ton of luggage? What about someone having an actual medical emergency? All solvable problems though, so maybe that's where it will go.
But, new tech, so it's inevitable that there are things we will just have to figure out over time.
\o/ (Score:1)
Give a discount proportional to the proportion of the journey spent awake with penalties!
Just park it (Score:2)
Why not just park and charge by the minute.
Re:Just park it (Score:5, Insightful)
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I don't know. All the same arguments could be applied to not acting upon a non-responsive passenger while the taxis is traveling as well. It isn't as if cardiac events or respiratory failures are just going to wait until the vehicle is parked!
Yet traditional cab drivers don't monitor their passengers to make sure they are awake and alert and not reporting any distress the entire trip, as matter of fact neither do bus lines, railroads, airlines, passenger ships, and so on. Neither do these business requir
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Of course not. That's not the scenario. The scenario is waking the driver upon reaching the destination. A taxi driver could physically shake the person.
Somebody, somewhere can.
So.. drive them somewhere? (Score:5, Interesting)
This whole process seems very dumb and not thought through.
If someone is not responsive in the back of a vehicle when the ride ends. the vehicle should just BE DRIVEN TO THE NEAREST EMS LOCATION, either the fire department or hospital. Calling the city EMS and wasting their time is nonsensical when the person IS IN A VEHICLE THAT DRIVES ITSELF ALREADY.
Then, if they get to the EMS and it turns out the person is just asleep, then charge them a few hundred dollars and reimburse the city.
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So what?
Do you honestly think that it is going to be faster to
- Call 911 .. then to just go directly to EMS?
- Get an EMS vehicle dispatched
- Send it to them
If you do, I think you need to rethink that process. Or, you have never before called 911.
Also, FYI, despite what you may think, ambulances DO have to follow the speed limit.
Re:So.. drive them somewhere? (Score:4)
The CA statute does not state that ambulances can exceed the speed *limit* by 15 MPH when ignoring a stop sign or stop signal; it states very plainly that the ambulance cannot exceed the speed of 15 MPH when doing so. In other words, the ambulance has to slow down (typically) to 15 MPH when passing through such intersections.
Similarly, the FL statute states that the absolute speed limit for ambulances is 40 MPH, except in cases of "extreme emergency". It does not state that ambulances can exceed the normal speed *limit* by 40 MPH.
It varies by jurisdiction, but no, they don't. At least in California [cornell.edu], they can legally exceed the speed limit:
So that means that while going through, say, a red light, not only can they legally go through it, but then can, at most, exceed the speed limit by 15 MPH while doing it.
Here is the relevant law for Hollywood, FL [amlegal.com]:
Which means they can exceed the speed limit by 39 MPH for "non-extreme" emergencies.
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Depending the location, EMS might not be at a standard address, might be on a call or waiting in some random parking lot.
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Re: So.. drive them somewhere? (Score:3)
The simple rules for EMS are that if they have to drive dangerously or race to the victim, then they are dead already.
Yes the prompt treatment will help, and in a few cases those extra minutes are crucial, but typically the difference is minor.
Location matters. In the article the cities are Los Angeles and Austin. A drive to the nearest EMS facility, ambulance station, fire station, hospital, or similar is likely under three minutes, at least one will be nearby, as fire stations particularly are placed bas
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If someone is not responsive in the back of a vehicle when the ride ends. the vehicle should just BE DRIVEN TO THE NEAREST EMS LOCATION,
Selfdriving cars cannot drive to every location, they can only drive to somewhere that has been mapped. So they might actually be incapable of doing this.
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Airports and hospitals are common destinations. It seems highly unlikely that those would not be well mapped locations.
I can imagine some hospital employee trying to get to work and the car is like "nope, can't get there, try some other service"
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You'd have a pile of robo-taxis at the ER every night. ER staff would have to triage a bunch of drunk people instead. That's a waste of already short-staffed ER's time.
EMS is better equipped to handle cases in-situ, since they can get there by blowing stop-signs, red lights and going whatever speed they deem necessary. Better the robo-taxi stop and alert the authorities.
The pavlovian solution (Score:1)
A shock collar. Ok maybe just a wristband tethered to the car. Mild misbehavior gets you a warning buzz, and after that you start getting some initially mild shocks that ramp up to safely below seizure level.
If you don't put it on you don't go anywhere, but still are being charged for the time. If you take it off you get dumped to the curb. We'll call it a health monitor.
When everything becomes a shakedown. (Score:1)
A remote Waymo assistant, dialling in through the car's speakers, repeatedly tried to rouse him and finally called 911 when he wouldn't stir...
Call this what it is; yet another way for those charging insane costs for certain services, to FORCE them upon citizens.
Fell asleep in the back of a cab? That's an emergency service call, charged out by the city to you from at least half a dozen corporations, partnerships, and LLCs at the bargain rate of only $4,700. Per minute.
Tracking your teenage driver on the new insurance-tattling app? Best read the fine print before you find out a fucking fender bender triggered $279,000 worth of emergency service
Automating something is a humbling experience (Score:1)
Even if you're automating something you yourself do on a regular basis.
This is a general property of the universe: put something under a (metaphorical or literal) microscope and you discover things that are at once obvious and at the same time fantastical.
Making Things is fun and frustrating that way.
Funny..ha ha? (Score:1)
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This would be kind of hilarious if it wasn’t such a drain on public resources.
"The Texas capital recorded 99 such calls in Waymo's first nine months of service there"
That's about one incident in every three days, on average, in a city of a million residents. Doesn't seem like an insuperable burden to me.
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Well Duh! (Score:5, Insightful)
Did it not occur to them that a lot of the demand for robotaxis would be from folks too tired, ill, drunk, or stoned to drive themselves or take public transit? This shouldn't be a surprise.
I have to wonder if the geniuses who started these services ever consulted cab companies and drivers before the fact to have a better understanding of what they were taking on. I'm guessing that they didn't, or maybe they just didn't listen.
Maybe they DID anticipate these things and just said "Fuck it - let's move fast, break things, and externalize the cost 'cause that's what we do best.
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I have to wonder if the geniuses who started these services ever consulted cab companies and drivers before the fact to have a better understanding of what they were taking on.
Of course they didn't. The name of the game is "disrupting an industry". Because on paper and in investor pitches, everything is straightforward, simple, and was practically waiting for them.
That reality is more messy, has more edge cases, doesn't always follow your process, is something you don't tell the investors and don't consider in your service until you've had the chance to cash out.
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My biggest beef with the whole self-driving thing is that we should NOT have started with cars.
Why not a self-driving cart that takes you around the store? Or a self-driving golf buggy? Or a self-driving airport passenger carrier to get you to your gate? Or even those little "trains" that some shopping centres have for the kids which are just wheeled vehicles?
THAT'S where we should have begun. A limited controlled environment, low-speeds, little impact, useful, even a pay-for service (do you want to wal
Design issues (Score:2)
Loud speaker with a WAKE UP recording along with self-closing doors should be de rigueur.
But these are just a few of the "I did not realize everything a Taxi Driver did." problem. There will be more.
As in moving luggage and helping elderly/disabled people into a vehicle.
"unpredictable humans" (Score:3)
What, exactly, is unpredictable about a sedentary human falling asleep? People do that while driving.
These robo-car companies imagine attentive humans, amazed and alert at all times, enjoying the thrill of this wonderful service, eager to swipe away with their payment devices.
Taser (Score:3)
Progressively up the amps. At a certain level without a response then you call 911.
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oh no ! (Score:2)
It's almost as if having humans around can sometimes have advantages.
But I'm sure this'll just be seen to add one more robot to the robot taxi. A humanoid co-pilot bot?
Jagged Progress (Score:1)
Technological progress is always jagged: On average things get better, but a minority of things regress and get worse. I'm sure there is a whole list of non-obvious reasons why riding a horse was better than driving a car.
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No real problems (Score:2)
CCTV (Score:2)
Weren't CCTV - with or without AI support - cameras expected to stop crimes? Turns out they can't even wake up a dozed off passenger. Even with AI, talkback and live operator.
This is not a problem (Score:2)
It is the last phase of getting the technology to maturity. Problems are to be expected, but they will be solved. And none of these are severe, these are nuisances. Which still means they have to be fixed, but it is entirely possible to do so.
For example, how to wake people up with good reliability is understood, they just need to do it. Demo: https://www.youtube.com/shorts... [youtube.com]
Maybe this is just American companies ignoring what the rest of the world does and already has figured out. Would not be the forst ti
The new housing for the unhoused (Score:2)
Robot taxis are going to be a great solution for the unhoused, just order a taxi, tell it to drive around, have a good sleep, get in a sponge bath, use your bucket, and off you go.
Re: The new housing for the unhoused (Score:2)
Not a problem (Score:2)
Who cares. Keep the meter running. It's the customer's problem (or the customer's estate).
Re: Not a problem (Score:2)
If someone finds a good solution (Score:2, Funny)
they can sell it to the White House team
Robo taxis get smarter (Score:2)
The Robo-taxis are dumb, with just enough knowledge to get you to your destination and avoid the easily avoided accidents. That took how many years?
They now need the ability to detect alcohol, drug use and violence so they can act appropriately. Most of the time if the passenger won't leave the car under his own power, call the authorities. It's not a bad default even if the person is drunk. Give them a ticket, maybe they'll stop getting so damn drunk.
If only there was a sound system installed in ever (Score:1)
Use some of my Mexican neighbors music (Score:2)
They won't be able to remain asleep unless they're truly dead.
Why? (Score:2)
Why can't a remote Waymo assistant shout? If the remote Waymo assistant shouting doesn't wake someone, why will shouting in person?
I think many drivers would be wary of touching a stranger, and would just call 911 if the person doesn't wake from shouting.