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Waymo Drives Off with South Bay Man's Luggage

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Re: Waymo Drives Off with South Bay Man's Luggage

#61
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any time I've loaded something into the trunk of a Waymo, it pre-emptively pops the trunk when I'm getting out _for_ me and reminds me to get my things from the trunk, so this is... surprising as a failure mode. Wondering if there was some issue with the latch/opening system, because it's definitely programmed to work the right way. (Or he tossed his stuff into the trunk from the main cabin, but... it's a pretty low…

None of that is the problem, shit happen, the problem is them asking them to come get their stuff instead of apologizing and sending the luggage at their own expense with a free ride at a future time.

sending the luggage at their own expense

Are they willing to take the risk of it getting lost or damaged?

Re: Waymo Drives Off with South Bay Man's Luggage

#62

I am surprised the trunk didn't open, and I’m very surprised that Waymo support could not turn the vehicle around. I’ve had a Waymo alert me when I left something in the back seat; I’m surprised it did not do the same for the trunk. I think the person should report this to either the California DMV or CPUC, as well as the local airport authority. For autonomous vehicles, I think people need to ‘normalize’ leaving one…

I’m very surprised that Waymo support could not turn the vehicle around

Suppose they sent it back to you, and the trunk still doesn't open. Now what?

Re: Waymo Drives Off with South Bay Man's Luggage

#63
post #34
post #21

The way this has apparently been handled saddens me. I worked for Cruise, a Waymo competitor. A Cruise vehicle famously had a very unfortunate accident and Cruise government relations employees famously tried to cover up the worst details when reporting it to the CA DMV. Of course the cover-up was discovered and guess what? Cruise lost their license and not long after lost all their funding and shut down. Self drivin…

It is also literally insanely hostile for Waymo to respond like this. The parent company, Alphabet, is valued over four trillion dollars. The proper response would have been: "oh, terribly sorry for the inconvenience, we'll immediately turn it around, wait there". If that was somehow actually possible, the next response should have been: "Oh, sorry that is impossible because of [actual reason X], we are terribly sorr…

I'm no lawyer

But they certainly have lawyers. No one feeding on this outrage bait seems to see the actual problem: If there's a mechanical or electrical problem that's preventing the trunk from opening, sending the car back to you won't fix that. As for delivering his luggage, I'm sure there are other liabilities they'd be exposing themselves to if they did that. Giving him a free trip to pick it up is the best option they had.

Re: Waymo Drives Off with South Bay Man's Luggage

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can’t they just put back into a car in the back seat or whatever and send it off to him? Seems strange to make it so difficult when they surely have a vehicle sitting right there in their depot that could do the job as soon as the customer is back home.

What if they did that, and the car somehow arrives empty? They're going to be in even bigger trouble.

[dead]

Re: Waymo Drives Off with South Bay Man's Luggage

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any time I've loaded something into the trunk of a Waymo, it pre-emptively pops the trunk when I'm getting out _for_ me and reminds me to get my things from the trunk, so this is... surprising as a failure mode. Wondering if there was some issue with the latch/opening system, because it's definitely programmed to work the right way. (Or he tossed his stuff into the trunk from the main cabin, but... it's a pretty low…

Over hundreds rides I've found it's extremely flakey on if the trunk will open again at dropoff after opening it earlier. My guess would be the Jaguar's CAN bus being the weak link

> My guess would be the Jaguar's CAN bus being the weak link

Puzzling because trunk open sensor is already a thing and making sure it’s triggered after a ‘open trunk’ command is issued is not exactly rocket science:)

Re: Waymo Drives Off with South Bay Man's Luggage

#66
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm no lawyer, but as soon as someone takes off with my stuff, that sounds like theft. I expect it's not theft. In England the intent requirement is famously "permanently to deprive" and so any situation where you're getting it back isn't theft. Doubtless the US has slightly different rules but I don't think that'll be theft.

The U.S. has very different rules. Just yesterday there was an incident in my town where a couple of guys drove a car out of a parking lot, then later drove it back to the parking lot where they were apprehended and arrested for theft.

We shouldn't mistake "You can be accused of a crime" for you committed that crime, especially in the US. Ask James Comey.

Re: Waymo Drives Off with South Bay Man's Luggage

#67
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm no lawyer, but as soon as someone takes off with my stuff, that sounds like theft. I expect it's not theft. In England the intent requirement is famously "permanently to deprive" and so any situation where you're getting it back isn't theft. Doubtless the US has slightly different rules but I don't think that'll be theft.

In England, can I take someone's belongings and extort them to pay for "shipping and handling" fees or compel them to go out of their way to some risky nondescript location to pick it up? Wonder what the crime in this case if it's "not theft".

That would probably be a Blackmail offence, the intent requirement is about gain (to you) or loss (to the other party) and there's a bunch of Reasonableness invocations because it depends whether the prosecutor can make out that a Reasonable person should know they aren't entitled to ask that you do this to get your property back, as of course one can gain (or the other party may lose) in a reasonable transaction.

For example I once left a laptop on a train when travelling to my mother's house for Xmas. At the time my mother still lived where I grew up, at the edge of Metro-land, and so of course most people on that train wouldn't steal a laptop, they probably earn more than the laptop was worth in a day's work. But I stepped off the train with my other belongings, realised as I walked away and it's too late. The train operating company is under no obligation to like, stop the train and bring back my laptop right? It's unfortunate, but it's not on purpose. A week later I picked it up from their main hub. Their behaviour was entirely reasonable.

If you're thinking that this rule about theft means some crimes aren't theft then yeah, the most notable example in English culture is the crime of "joyriding" which is when you take somebody's car and you drive that around for a while and then you just get out and run off. That's not theft because, as we saw, no intent permanently to deprive (because it destroys evidence like fingerprints some joyriders might torch the car, but that would be intent permanently to deprive). So the crime of "Taking Without Owner's Consent" or TWOC was invented for cars and there's a fun rabbit hole you can disappear down as crooks take like boats and other things and the exact wording of that law is interpreted by courts as to whether it's TWOC if you took a bicycle, or a rowboat, or...

Re: Waymo Drives Off with South Bay Man's Luggage

#68
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They would probably start to consider installing automatic doors if enough people do it.

Pretty sure the next generation of Waymos, the Zeekr vans, have auto-closing doors.

The Ioniq 5s also got modified for automatic doors.

Re: Waymo Drives Off with South Bay Man's Luggage

#69
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over hundreds rides I've found it's extremely flakey on if the trunk will open again at dropoff after opening it earlier. My guess would be the Jaguar's CAN bus being the weak link

> My guess would be the Jaguar's CAN bus being the weak link Puzzling because trunk open sensor is already a thing and making sure it’s triggered after a ‘open trunk’ command is issued is not exactly rocket science:)

Besides the CAN bus there's also a lot of other steps along the chain, their in-vehicle comms network, the uplink they're working with

Waymo's own systems are sending the current volume and HVAC settings to the OEM CAN bus every tick (presumably because the HMI's traffic is very low priority and may not be delivered on their network), maybe the trunk release doesn't tolerate repeat activations because of some quirk?

At that point obviously I'm guessing a bit, but the fact this issue has been prominent for so long makes me think there's some platform-specific quirk that's making it more complicated than it looks from the outside

Re: Waymo Drives Off with South Bay Man's Luggage

#70
post #50

Not keeping the door open while grabbing luggage is NPC behavior no matter if it's waymo, Uber or a taxi. The fact he mad this mistake, then went to the news media to broadcast his bad decision making is embarrassing. I bet he finds himself the victim of bad situations all the time and doesn't know why

wow these shitty comments/people blaming the victim for not taking more precaution are everywhere
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