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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

#41

Post by denysvitali »

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…

I think it's usually locked from the outside. Opening the door from the inside (in most cars I've been in) works.

I would actually be surprised of the opposite (not being able to leave a vehicle because the doors are locked). This sounds very scary in an emergency situation where you have to leave the vehicle

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

#42

Post by amclennon »

likeabatterycar wrote: post #31
Waterluvian wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Train cars? As in the vehicle on a track where an immediate stop is almost never more dangerous?

I didn't say pull the hand brake at 60mph. There should be an emergency "pull over and stop gracefully" button.

They do. I'm guessing there was a bug in finding a place to safely pull over?

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

#43

Post by moralestapia »

blibble wrote: post #37
whyleyc wrote: post #2

The video is wild - Waymo support apparently struggles to remotely control the car.

these things need to have a giant E-STOP button accessible to the passengers otherwise they should simply be banned

I expressed this exact same concern a couple months ago (and was downvoted, a common theme w/ Google fanbois nowadays):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42117343

From @simonw back then,

>Yes, there's a "pullover now" button on the dashboard at all times.

Well, doesn't seem to be the case here.

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

#44

Post by spuz »

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?

To be clear, I'm talking specifically about the first line of support at Waymo here. I am not precluding that they have higher levels of control behind layers of authorisation.

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

#45

Post by lyime »

jameslars wrote: post #35
binoct wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If an Uber driver caused you to miss a flight by driving around a parking lot in circles at a speed you can't exit the vehicle, you don't think it would be a reasonable request for the customer to ask Uber to make it right?

Reasonable to make a request. Also reasonable for it to be denied.

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

#46

Post by moralestapia »

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.

Yeah, why didn't he just jumped out of a moving car, right?

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

#47

Post by lyime »

blibble wrote: post #37
whyleyc wrote: post #2

The video is wild - Waymo support apparently struggles to remotely control the car.

these things need to have a giant E-STOP button accessible to the passengers otherwise they should simply be banned

Absolutely not. While that might sound like a safety feature it can also be extremely unsafe.

Imagine letting a passenger in a car use the e-brake at any time.

It's a tricky problem.

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

#48

Post by steve_adams_86 »

bhhaskin wrote: post #34
_jab wrote: post #23

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.

It's all of these edge cases that makes self driving cars impractical outside of optimal conditions.

Islands are so common in driving, I would expect them to be anticipated or encountered early on in development.

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

#49

Post by fullshark »

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?

I.e. the user is always at fault, the engineering manifesto.

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

#50

Post by Terr_ »

amclennon wrote: post #42
likeabatterycar wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say pull the hand brake at 60mph. There should be an emergency "pull over and stop gracefully" button.

They do. I'm guessing there was a bug in finding a place to safely pull over?

Sounds likely, in which case there needs to be a much more "break glass in case of emergency" control which gradually lowers the maximum speed cap of the vehicle.

So even if the vision/pathfinding believes there is nowhere to park and nowhere else to turn, it will still coast to a stop in a way that is not inherently less-safe than a more-normal car running out of gas and stalling on the road.

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