It doesn't even say for how long. 5 minutes? 10 minutes? Especially since apparently a police officer was able to hop right in and drive it out of the way.
I'm more curious why stalled Waymo's aren't being immediately detected by Waymo, and remote drivers/controllers aren't immediately manually addressing the situation.
Or are they, and this would have been resolved in the next 5 minutes anyways?
If you look at the footage it looks a lot like nothing material actually happened.
There was a stuck Waymo at Mason and California near the Fairmont Hotel's main entrance on Mason. The VP was also stopping at the hotel's main entrance. From the footage it isn't even clear that the motorcade stopped, or was delayed by the Waymo since it was more or less at its destination.
I would be shocked if Waymo doesn't start avoiding motorcade routes preemptively just to prevent this headline from ever occurring again. They're extremely sensitive to bad PR given the nature of the industry.
The SS can and does make that information available when necessary, for instance to private toll bridge operators. Waymo doesn't need significant advance notice either, just minutes for normal vehicles.
I suspect the easiest thing would be a "return to base and shutdown" button that the Secret Service could trigger at short notice - would cause problems for everything wanting to use a Waymo, but I suspect the SS are quite OK with causing disruption already.
Sounds like fake movie spy shit to me. It turns out, the Secret Service is an organization of humans with ordinary lives and a relatively modest budget.
It’s called the “tow truck protocol”. The specifics are too complicated to get into here, but it involves a phone call, and sometimes they bring in an outside agency known only as “AAA”.
It appears that a police officer was able to enter the Waymo to move it. I’ve never heard of this before. Are law enforcement trained to do this in all areas that Waymo operates? Can a random person open the door of a Waymo and move it at will?
Waymo has an emergency team that will guide LE on taking over a Waymo. They'll shut it down, pop the doors, and give them a code to punch in on the wheel controls to disengage it and put it in manual mode to shuttle it out of the way.
If your ordinary car breaks down in the middle of a busy road, then yeah the police or fire department will indeed help you push it out of the way (if bystanders aren’t already). You wouldn’t say that’s the responsibility of Toyota.
It's not about the car or the manufactirer, it's about the operator.
The closest analogy would be when the driver of an ordinary car becomes incapacitated.
In that case, the police or someone acting on the polices behalf can and will move the vehicle and then the owner pays for that later. But there IS an operator who is responsible for the vehicle unless some misfortune happens.
A self driving car sseems more like letting other people deal with any problems you caused by letting that car loose on the road.
Basically the same as parking a regular car somewhere it's not supposed to be and leaving it.
"Oh if this car I left in front of the firehouse is in the way, just call this number and I'll tell you some instructions how to unlock the car and drive it somewhere else for me."
I understand this is a slippery slope argument on my part, but why is this any different from the emergency services pushing a non-autonomous vehicle out of the way to clear traffic?
What if it’s a privately owned bus, or a taxi? Would those companies foot the bill for their disabled vehicle?
If a private company leaves operational vehicles in the middle of streets and requires city services to move them to unblock public roads... sure, let's charge them. Is that something that is happening? Is that more likely to start happening we make this change? This slope is beyond slippery.
It depends on whether you see it as a piece of machinery that's broken, or a non-human driver that's choosing to violate the rules of the road. As the article mentions, it sounds like California has chosen the second and plans to begin issuing citations.
A human owns and operates and is the benificiary of a company that chooses to put un-chaperoned machinery on the road.
"machinery that's broken" doesn't make it ok. Where did the broken machinery come from? It's not a natural event like the weather. It came from someone who placed it there without a supervising agent to be responsible for it.
> "machinery that's broken" doesn't make it ok. Where did the broken machinery come from? It's not a natural event like the weather. It came from someone who placed it there without a supervising agent to be responsible for it.
Sometimes making an individual responsible just isn't the right call. If you have a car that you know is a bit of a clunker, and it breaks down in the middle of the road, should you be cited? I'm not saying California's decision was bad, but I could imagine a reasonable government pursuing a different strategy too.
Yes. Of course. Most states have some form of inspections and minimum standards for safety, and a liability insurance requirement, and driver licence for that matter, just for this reason, to put limits around bad judgement and distinguish bad luck from bad practice.
This is not the same as knowingly driving a car that is more likely to break down. This is not meeting part of your responsibilities because emergency services will take care of it.
It's abandoning a vehicle the same as with a normal car where you didn't abandon it through no fault of your own, but because you intentionally dumped it somewhere.
Waymo didn't intentionally break a car in exactly the same way a drunk driver didn't intentionally crash a car.
they already do this regularly. just instead of driving it off the road they ram it with their vehicles off the road. edit: or if there's time they will tow it.
I've seen a Waymo block the Muni tracks before. When a train finally showed up a cop appeared in less than a minute. They didn't jump in the car but they did knock on the window and speak to a support rep. The rep was able to instruct the car to move forward and turn onto a side street. It then blocked the side street for a bit before eventually moving on.
While I'm not against self-driving taxis I have some serious concerns over how these cars will impact emergency response in an earthquake or fire if the cars become more prevalent.
Do you, by chance, live in NYC? That is the only place I have lived where the meatbags regularly do not get out of the way of sirens. In most other places, they make a great effort.
This is true for everywhere I have lived in North America. Outside of NYC it isn't so much people not caring, as people not realizing that the siren is mostly to tell you to clear the way. A lot of people just take it to mean "stop where you are", when the actual intention is "move out of the way, then stop". I travel along a route near a hospital frequently, and it is incredibly common for people to be stopped in front of an ambulance, blocking the path, while the ambulance blasts their horn trying to get them to move out of the way.
If a meatbag comes upon a downed power pole, broken fire hydrant, fender bender, or sunken stretch of pavement they're usually pretty good about turning around or avoiding the obstacle. I haven't seen the same from these taxis yet.
The thought this was done on purpose to send a message crossed my mind. The Dems have been rather anti-tech lately. Would make for a good sci-fi movie.
I'm more curious why stalled Waymo's aren't being immediately detected by Waymo, and remote drivers/controllers aren't immediately manually addressing the situation.
Or are they, and this would have been resolved in the next 5 minutes anyways?