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Man trapped inside driverless Waymo car as it spins in circles

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Man trapped inside driverless Waymo car as it spins in circles

#21

Post by throwawee »

likeabatterycar wrote: post #16
spuz wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the only option they have is "pull over" which in this case just caused the car to continue circling looking for a safe place to pull over. If they had an actual kill switch, we'd probably be watching another video of some guy on a call to waymo support while stuck in the middle of a highway.

> If they had an actual kill switch I'm unfamiliar - we have these in train cars, did the architects behind driverless techshit not think it was necessary?

If they can remotely kill the engine of any Waymo car in motion, so can hackers.

Re: Man trapped inside driverless Waymo car as it spins in circles

#22

Post by binoct »

bigbones wrote: post #4
WantonQuantum wrote: post #3

So the guy is in the car and he's concerned about catching his flight but when the operator asks him to do something in the waymo app he doesn't want to do it. Could it be that he'd rather keep filming for internet notoriety than stop filming and actually solve his problem?

That clearly seems the case, doesn't mean the video wasn't worth making though. This situation would terrify a lot of people

It's worth making, but there's some serious drama queen vibes that make it feel pretty overblown. If an uber is late to the airport a reasonable person doesn't threaten the driver with covering the cost of their flight.

Re: Man trapped inside driverless Waymo car as it spins in circles

#23

Post by _jab »

My guess is that the car is looking for a place to pull over (perhaps because the rider pressed the "pull over" button. In this mode, the car hugs the right side of the road until it can find a spot to stop, which would normally work alright, except in this one particular spot where the "right side of the road" is only this tiny island.

So the car just circles around it indefinitely.

Re: Man trapped inside driverless Waymo car as it spins in circles

#24

Post by jvanderbot »

throwawee wrote: post #17

I usually think it's a stretch when people compare new tech to old sci-fi stories, but "brilliant machine just runs in circles endlessly and nobody can stop it" is straight out of I, Robot.

I have never worked on a single robot that didn't go through a circle spin phase. It's a meme at this point, at least for folks I've worked with.

Re: Man trapped inside driverless Waymo car as it spins in circles

#25

Post by Terr_ »

throwawee wrote: post #17

I usually think it's a stretch when people compare new tech to old sci-fi stories, but "brilliant machine just runs in circles endlessly and nobody can stop it" is straight out of I, Robot.

I remember "Speedy": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaround_(story)

Re: Man trapped inside driverless Waymo car as it spins in circles

#26

Post by kbelder »

WantonQuantum wrote: post #3

So the guy is in the car and he's concerned about catching his flight but when the operator asks him to do something in the waymo app he doesn't want to do it. Could it be that he'd rather keep filming for internet notoriety than stop filming and actually solve his problem?

Yeah, I got a negative impression of the guy. It looped around the parking lot for five minutes. I'm not a fan of self-driving cars, but this doesn't seem like a huge deal.

Re: Man trapped inside driverless Waymo car as it spins in circles

#27

Post by jazzyjackson »

binoct wrote: post #22
bigbones wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That clearly seems the case, doesn't mean the video wasn't worth making though. This situation would terrify a lot of people

It's worth making, but there's some serious drama queen vibes that make it feel pretty overblown. If an uber is late to the airport a reasonable person doesn't threaten the driver with covering the cost of their flight.

I might if my uber driving was doing donuts in the parking lot lmao

Re: Man trapped inside driverless Waymo car as it spins in circles

#28

Post by kayodelycaon »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #18
mauvehaus wrote: post #8

Can we please get some clarification on "trapped" from someone who's used a Wayno? Surely the driverless car hasn't locked him inside. Right? Surely every driverless vehicle ought to have a button that when pressed gracefully stops the car so the passengers can safely exit.

> Surely the driverless car hasn't locked him inside. Right? Every (modern) car I’ve been in, driverless or not, will lock the doors once the vehicle is in motion - automakers are not in the habit of letting passengers fall into the road like that. Just imagine the lawsuits…

The locks on my car don’t prevent me from opening front doors while driving. The only rear doors have a child safety switch which would stop the doors from opening when locked. But you have to turn that on.

You don’t want a locked door preventing you from exiting the car if you have a crash.

Re: Man trapped inside driverless Waymo car as it spins in circles

#30

Post by Terr_ »

renewiltord wrote: post #10

Yeah, this happened to me at home. I have this lock on the door and I couldn’t get in because it was locked. I called support and they said I needed to use the key on the lock but that SHOULDN’T BE NECESSARY. Completely unsafe that the door wouldn’t unlock. Shelter is a human right and I was trapped outside of my house just because I wouldn’t use some “device” that so-called “support” was trying to get me to use. Sam…

Beneath the satire, you're asserting that the primary purpose of locks on cars are to prevent adult passengers from exiting? That's not right at all.

Might as well design a desktop environment that forces you to enter your password in order to log off.

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