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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

#61

Post by mrayycombi »

jrflowers wrote: post #20
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?

> Could it be that he'd rather keep filming for internet notoriety than stop filming and actually solve his problem? The guy kept filming for under sixteen seconds after asking about and receiving clarification that she is unable to intervene with the car and needs him to use the app. I like the idea that this somehow indicates bad faith or ineptitude in your estimation.

Once something wrong was identified and it should have done so independently, the passenger should not have to intervene at all.

Passenger:1 Google: 0

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

#62

Post by mrayycombi »

fullshark wrote: post #49
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.

Indeed.

Let's see how that works out when we're doing 65mph in an autonomous drone car with no steering wheel.

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

#63

Post by Aloisius »

hilbert42 wrote: post #55
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?

"…the operator asks him to do something in the waymo app he doesn't want to do it." Why are you trying to offer an excuse for the inexcusable? The app should have nothing to do with it. Where are the emergency stop and exit controls for the passenger? He should be able to exit the vehicle at any time. I fed up with this bad tech and the fact that governments let Big Tech act irresponsibly to get away with this shit.…

Jail time?

This poor man was forced to slowly circle around a parking lot eight times! It took over five minutes before they fixed the problem! He almost missed his flight! Outrage, outrage.

This is clearly worthy of the electric chair.

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

#64

Post by emmelaich »

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.

Buridan's principle will tell you that there will always be edge cases.

There will always be room for improvement. The best you can do is to make them vanishingly rare.

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

#65

Post by Aloisius »

Kozmik1 wrote: post #52

It's easy enough to imagine an actual emergency which would necessitate remote or local intervention to stop the car, and the call seems to indicate that they don't have an emergency override or at least not without escalation. What if there were a: medical emergency of the passenger crash up ahead fire up ahead earthquake flood malfunction of the driverless car really anything that would make you pull over your actu…

There's a Pull Over button that will stop the vehicle.

He was "not immediately aware" of it and "did not have an opportunity to use it."

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

#66

Post by jdietrich »

olyjohn wrote: post #12
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?

Could it be that Waymo should just be able to stop the car? It doesn't seem at all ridiculous to you that he is already on the phone with them, and then they just read the script to tell him to pull out his phone and fire up the app? Just what I want is to ride in a car with Comcast level of customer service.

>Could it be that Waymo should just be able to stop the car?

That kind of remote control opens up the possibility - maliciously or accidentally, likely or unlikely - for every Waymo in the fleet to abruptly stop, regardless of whether it's safe to do so. That scenario is orders of magnitude worse than "sometimes a Waymo gets lost in a parking lot and it takes a thirty second call to fix it".

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

#67

Post by [deleted] »

jdietrich wrote: post #66
olyjohn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could it be that Waymo should just be able to stop the car? It doesn't seem at all ridiculous to you that he is already on the phone with them, and then they just read the script to tell him to pull out his phone and fire up the app? Just what I want is to ride in a car with Comcast level of customer service.

>Could it be that Waymo should just be able to stop the car? That kind of remote control opens up the possibility - maliciously or accidentally, likely or unlikely - for every Waymo in the fleet to abruptly stop, regardless of whether it's safe to do so. That scenario is orders of magnitude worse than "sometimes a Waymo gets lost in a parking lot and it takes a thirty second call to fix it".

[deleted]

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

#68

Post by fragmede »

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?

it seems important to note that they didn't miss their flight.

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

#69

Post by fragmede »

Aloisius wrote: post #65
Kozmik1 wrote: post #52

It's easy enough to imagine an actual emergency which would necessitate remote or local intervention to stop the car, and the call seems to indicate that they don't have an emergency override or at least not without escalation. What if there were a: medical emergency of the passenger crash up ahead fire up ahead earthquake flood malfunction of the driverless car really anything that would make you pull over your actu…

There's a Pull Over button that will stop the vehicle. He was "not immediately aware" of it and "did not have an opportunity to use it."

edit: there's a small blurry one that plausibly could be it at the very end of the video.

~you can see in the video that it's not showing that button on the screen though.~

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

#70

Post by fragmede »

Aloisius wrote: post #53
moralestapia wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The pull over button is in fact on the screen. According to his spokesperson, he wasn't aware of it.

the button is giant and blue and impossible to miss and you can see from the video it isn't on the screen. the screen in the video is mostly brown with a sliver of blue on the side.
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