These cars need an emergency stop button which brings the car to a halt as fast as could plausibly be safe and then opens the doors. This is standard equipment on all industrial machinery and used to be standard equipment on all trains as well; I got into a lot of trouble once for pulling the emergency stop cord on a train when I was young. The inconvenience and occasional danger of unwarranted emergency stops is almost certain to be outweighed by the lives saved in the rarer cases where the E-stop is necessary.
While this did happen and obviously isn’t great, there’s a more skeptical side too.
The ‘trapped’ man is the CEO of an AI consulting firm. He posted the video to linked in, didn’t press the abort button, and had a relatively successful customer support experience (5 minutes delayed and not charged for the trip). Apparently he is using a PR firm to handle questions.
Make of that what you will. Waymo can clearly do better, although for what it’s worth — my worst uber experiences have been much worse than this (legitimately unsafe driving decisions).
What is the psychological term for people that defend defective heavy machinery that are not yet ready for production and yet being tested in production and in the general public? This will be the most highly unpopular opinion with this audience but if a human drove around in circles potentially blocking other drivers even in a parking lot a cop would pull them over and possibly have them take a sobriety test. If they passed they would get a warning and the incident would be logged with dispatch. Continued behavior would result in a ticket at best and drivers license suspension at worst. Please stop giving exciting tech a break and expect more. I am starting to lean towards requiring hardware and software developers and their respective companies that work on public heavy machinery to have federal certifications that can be revoked if they are moving fast and breaking things in public. Broken navigation in heavy machinery is a risk to the general public. This case was benign but the next one may not be.
I expect much more by now. I would expect that if anything cars would be actively protecting humans. If a toddler wanders into the road without a parent I would expect them by now to use a PA speaker to alert people and actively create a blockade around the child with only room for humans to pass, flash all their lights continuously and video stream to safety personnel on duty with the vehicle maker.
Reminds me of this enlightening video mapping out a possible future where self-driving cars have dominance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0
It's very possible that it won't be the utopia it is portrayed to be.
Never been in one but these things should have a big red stop button on the roof or something. Don't they?
I wish the video didn't end so quickly, because I'm actually curious what exactly had to happen next. I'm guessing having active involvement in both the passenger in the car and the support staff is a feature, since you wouldn't want rogue support operators to be able to just bring cars to abrupt halts or worse, so if the robot driver is unable to pull over safely, it sort of makes sense to require at least some sanity checking from the passengers themselves.
Of course, it's reasonable to be frustrated, especially if you're in a hurry, but anyone who has been in a vehicle accident in an Uber or taxi will know that there's just some inherent risk involved when you're getting into a car with another driver, just as there is risk involved when getting into a car and driving yourself, and I think the idea that a robot driver could fail and get stuck is something that you just have to be mindful of and account for, the same way you have to be mindful of the risk of getting stuck on an elevator. Without seeing the remainder of the altercation it's hard to judge if Waymo's design is lacking for fallbacks here. Another question would be what can be done if the passenger can't access the Waymo app; would they have to jump into the driver's seat?
It's driving in a loop, not spinning in circles.
Waymo rider support seems to be overly limited in their abilities.
Requiring the user to press buttons on an app, and not being able to do it for them is just one example. Plenty of other videos show they can't control the car, and all they can do is talk to the user.
At a minimum, they should have the ability to stop the car and drive it, remote control, at 1 mph, to get it unstuck or out of the way.
Were the doors locked, or could he have just opened one and gotten out at any time (obviously when it was going slowly) ? It just seems irresponsible to lock someone inside a car, but then if they weren't, then he wasn't exactly "trapped"
Seems like he could have ended the ride but didn't, and refused when instructed to knowing he wouldn't get his video to post online.
Not sure acting the ignorant consumer makes me trust the supposed dangerous situation you are in isn't manufactured in some way.
What a sensationalist headline. The car slowly drives around in circles on a parking lot and the passenger apparently does not feel in danger (being on the phone with CS and taking videos for social media).
From the headline, you wouldn't know that they stopped the car about 15 seconds after he was connected to the remote assistance.
Just the video:
I was hoping for slightly more of an Asimov echo in this than it actually seems to present :)
Do these cars have a big orange button that connects you straight to support? Or do you have to get out your phone and open the app and dig around for the right button while your ride is spinning in circles?
The car should have an option to stop, let the passenger & baggage out, then resume its search for a parking spot. Or leave altogether since it no longer needs to be in the airport parking lot.
Still, typical of poorly designed software.
I appreciate we have to defend the driving system and nobody was harmed. But for every such mishap the reminder should be that this has to be fixed only once.
I might just jump in the driver's seat and take over
I've always known that the Infinite Loop would some day catch up with the physical world, and here we are.
Taking the whole software/communication/hardware complexity into account, imagine, how many bugs and vulnerabilities may be present in such non-open-source systems? Based on the recent history where we know even 0-day phone exploits exist, how dangerous would it be if a vehicle (or most of them simultaneously) can become being controlled remotely?
This has to be pretty rare for Waymo? I haven't heard too many horror stories
It's not "spinning".
This is the futurist that cannot figure out how to stop a Waymo from the app – https://mikejohns.ceo
"Mike Johns is an exceptional AI expert speaker specializing in AI", whatever you say man
But I keep hearing AI is the future! Bleak indeed
i actually felt dizzy just watching that
"Spins" and "trapped" are extremely disingenuous. Terrible headline.
Not dumb enough to ever ever get in one of those.
This is a nightmare of a situation.
It's true that it's probably over in a short time, but that is easily a stressful enough situation to cause people to have panic attacks, heart attacks, and have a range of other issues.
I would almost argue that it's negligent of Waymo to not have a kill switch they can remotely fire, and then another layer of kill switch, and then another 5 layers of kill switches...
You can't fail to control a driverless car under any circumstance.
The guy seemed really impatient, talked over the operator while she was trying to give instructions, and then refused to follow instructions given by the phone operator.
Judging by how short the video is, I’m assuming that when he just did the 2-click thing the operator told him to do on his phone, the Waymo probably stopped and let him out.
I get vibes he did it on purpose for social media. For example, you’re supposed to be at the airport an hour before your flight, and here he is winging about a Waymo going in circles for a couple mins and threatening to send the bill for his flight to the operator? Eh?