These cars need to have a panic button that allows a remote operator to talk to the passengers, assess the situation, alert police and override the auto driving to get them out of bad situations. Same as an emergency call button on an elevator basically. I dont understand these cars to have any feature like that so far, and I’m assuming this woman would have used it if one was available, so please correct me if I’m wrong.
These cars are likely going to turn into hijack machines if they’re programmed for “maximum safety” in situations where, realistically, breaking every traffic law, hitting a pedestrian or causing damage to the vehicle through dangerous terrain may be the only way out with a living passenger. The second it begins to percolate among criminals that these things are super easy to stop at the perfect location of your choosing like this, they are going to become a massive target.
Or they turn into a hearse if the passenger has a medical emergency and the car doesn’t redirect while the passenger is incapacitated. They might be coherent enough to press a button, but not to open their phone, navigate the app, call for help or redirect the car to a hospital…
But that of course requires labor so it will not happen until legally mandated after a minimum threshold of people die.
override the auto driving
I must be tired right now but I don’t see how a remote operator could have driven better in this situation.
You can’t get away from someone blocking your car in traffic without risk.of hitting them or other people or vehicles.
You probably meant they ought to drive away regardless of what they hit, if it helps the passenger escape a.dire.situation? But I have to wonder if a remote operator would agree to be put on the spot like that.
I can’t think of a NY cab driver that couldn’t have handled this situation.
This guy isn’t doing fedoras any favors either - I’m already a bit on the skeptical side when I see a fedora.
Yea I’m not too keen on giving authorization to hit pedestrians. If I feel threatened in my car, I am not allowed to run over the person so why should a driverless car gain that right? And if the panic button is going to call the police, how is that any different from the passenger using their phone to contact police? Seems like extra steps of middlemen and confusion when the passenger could just call once they feel the need.
I could defintely see a case for some extra safety features that help keep the doors locked and shut, maybe thicker windows too if needed to prevent robberies/assaults.
The “hitting pedestrians” is an extreme hypothetical, and not one you should particularly get hung up on. But it is one that still has to be considered. Passive security measures only go so far for the passenger.
Realistically, a car can get out of a vast majority of situations evasively without hitting hostile pedestrians, such as reversing rapidly and then turning around or driving in an opposite travel lane to bypass the blockage. Or hopping a curb and using a sidewalk if it is not occupied (or just blasting the shit out of the horn if it is occupied). These are all things that waymo’s auto mode cannot and will not do, because it doesn’t have the reasoning to understand when such measures are necessary.
If I feel threatened in my car, I am not allowed to run over the person
You are not allowed to run people over merely because you feel threatened.
You are allowed to use deadly force, in the USA when you reasonably believe that it is necessary to prevent someone from unlawfully killing, causing serious physical injury, or committing a short list of violent felonies. The harassment described in the article probably does not rise to that level, though an ambitious lawyer might try to describe intentionally causing the car to stop as carjacking or kidnapping.
And if the panic button is going to call the police, how is that any different from the passenger using their phone to contact police? Seems like extra steps of middlemen and confusion when the passenger could just call once they feel the need.
Think of it as a backup for the phone in the case where, say, there’s an adult and a kid in the car, the kid has no phone of their own, and the adult loses consciousness with their phone locked. Or the car is being actively jostled by a group of people (say it drove into the middle of an embryonic riot), causing the passenger to drop their phone, whereupon it slides under the seat. Or the phone just runs out of charge or doesn’t survive getting dropped into the passenger’s triple-extra-large fast-food coffee. It won’t be needed 99% of the time, but the other 1% might save someone’s life, and (presuming the car already has a cell modem it in) the cost of adding the feature should be minimal.
If a man jumps out in front of my car in traffic and points a pistol at me after I stop. I am going around or thru him and there is no other option. Anyone else trying to stop me even without visible weapons is going to get evasive maneuvers to protect myself because I am not dealing with that bullshit. That includes weaving far outside my travel lane or going over a sidewalk. That is self defense and a split second decision that any driver may have to make. Waymo prioritizes all outside obstacle avoidance which means it doesn’t even want to leave it’s set travel lane, which makes them trivial to stop like this with no recourse.
The point I am making is that self driving has a really hard time interpreting traffic edge cases or passenger emergencies like this. A remote operator could make the decision to drive over curbs and other lanes, if free, to save the passenger, and realistically should avoid hitting pedestrians too… but in the case of an armed attacker - well, yknow. Like force for like force.
Calling police would only be an auxiliary function to report the video evidence. They cannot be depended on to respond in time to actually make a difference.
Would a remote operator interpret things accurately in 10 seconds or less, or be a job anyone would even want? How does the liability chain of command work? Who knows. But the current system makes no decision at all, and that is unacceptable. And the medical point still stands too, a remote operator could immediately reroute the vehicle to a hospital and alert the medical staff. A panic button is absolutely needed.
What are you going on about? Have you ever ridden in one of these?
They do have these buttons…
It sounds like Waymo were already aware of the situation, in fact they called her in the vehicle as it was happening.
Not to say this isn’t a good suggestion, but they seem to have other systems in place that worked.
“The men came over to the car again and stood in front of it for a few minutes. Finally when they left, the car was still stalled but I clicked the ‘in car support’ on the screen and they seemed to be aware of the issue,” Amina said. “They asked if I was OK and the car began to drive towards my location. They asked if I needed police support and I said no.”
When she was almost to her destination, Waymo support called her again to ask if she was ok, she said. “I assured him that I was fine and he told me I would be given a free ride after,” she said. “After many hours I was called one last time by their support team. They asked if I was OK and told me that they have 24/7 support available. They also said I would get the next ride or next two rides (uncertain) free.”
“In an instance like this, our riders have 24/7 access to Rider Support agents who will help them navigate the situation in real time and coordinate closely with law enforcement officers to provide further assistance as needed,” a spokesperson for Waymo told 404 Media in an email. “While these sorts of events are exceedingly rare among the 100,000 trips we serve a week across Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix, we take them very seriously. We continuously look for ways to improve rider experience and remain committed to improving road safety and mobility in the cities where we operate.”
they should have [thing that already exists]
Nobody reads the article though…
They have customer support that provides words of platitude, an ineffective police call with a 15minute response time, and no control over the situation. She got lucky this time, but my point remains standing.
Honestly a proper panic button would have an alarm go off and speed dial 911. But I’m sure people would abuse it.
Let’s not call them “men” please, they lost their right to be counted amongst men with this behavior.
JFC, they don’t cease to be men because they’re assholes. Stop pretending that ‘men’ can’t do anything wrong. There is no man card and men are a diverse group of people.
I never said men can’t do anything wrong.
What I meant was “boys” will treat women like this. “men” won’t. It’s just a term. Not to be interpreted literally. And also, this isn’t to assume men are exempt from making mistakes, we’re all human and we’re all flawed, but it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to know that treating ANYONE like this isn’t something that is defined as “a mistake.”
And they probably got upset when women chose the bear.
Because that question was/is blatantly sexist.
Or also put forth the idea that all men, and all would be men, are dangerous predators, for no other reason than being a man. And that’s dangerous thinking.
The question isn’t sexist, it’s emotionally driven, and dismissing it outright is narrow minded. That is what I think is dangerous.
The truth is the question reveals that to most women asked the question, men are unpredictable, and women have to navigate the world that way.
A bear is a bear, it’s always going to do what it does, and you can work around that. Leave it alone and it will leave you alone, even if you have to work hard to avoid it. If you disturb it, it will kill you. It’s predictable.
Men on the other hand are very likely to respect women, maybe even work together. However, there is the small, small, SMALL chance that they will be a terrible person. They could attack, abuse, sexually assault, straight up rape, or even kill the woman; or they could do a disgusting combination of those.
The true root of the question isn’t “do you think a random man is more dangerous than a wild animal?” Of course not.
The real question being put on a social scale is “what’s more predictably dangerous, a random man, or a wild animal?” And the fact that women almost unanimously have the same answer should be commentary enough on how they have to live their lives.
In the past, autonomous vehicle development dwelled on the ethical hypothetical situations like “do you hit an old lady crossing the road in order to avoid crashing into a schoolbus full of children?”, but what about safety hypotheticals? Like, if you were actually driving your vehicle, there are moments when it’s in your best interest to not be at a stop, such as when people are physically surrounding your car and potentially mean to cause you harm, which is extremely common in America. When does the driverless car get you out of a tight spot and run over some carjackers if need be?
Edit: To respond to everyone saying I’m full of shit, and that carjackings aren’t common, there were more than 500 carjackings in NYC alone in 2021. New Orleans had 281 in 2021. 800 carjackings in Philly in 2021. 1800 carjackings in Chicago in 2021. Tell me, is that not enough carjackings to warrant asking my question?
If an AI car ever has to make a decision on who dies, the answer should always be “whoever agreed to the terms and conditions before they got in the vehicle”.
This will never be the case. Because nobody will buy an overpriced “yo, if there’s ever any doubt about, like, anything - just put a bullet in my head” machine. So nobody will sell it.
Face it - you have the same thousands of pounds of metal today, and you’re the only one making decisions. You (drivers, as a community) have killed before, for selfish reasons: because you don’t want to die is the least selfish of them. Other hits include “didn’t wanna not get drunk with the homies”, “I really needed to answer that text” and “I have 10 minutes till home but the game starts in 5, it’s my favorite team, I can make it”. And you somehow seem to want non-drivers (passengers of AI cars) to have the same expectation that they will be a victim even when they get a car?
Drivers are so self-centered it’s goddamn ridiculous.
Ah yes, drivers are self-centered for checks notes not wanting pedestrians to be hit by self-driving cars
I’m talking about pedestrians, not other drivers.
If autonomous vehicles can’t be trusted not to run people over, then they shouldn’t be allowed to go above like 20mph in a built up area where there’s likely to be people walking about. And frankly neither should human drivers, but good luck not getting them to call it a “war on motorists” if you try.
How the fuck do you figure that’s “extremely common”? You need to spend less time on the Internet my dude …
500 carjackings in NYC in a year? Oh the humanity.
There’s literally a million cars on the road on any given day just in lower Manhattan.
Get a sense of scale.
10k pedestrians get hit by cars and trucks in NYC every year and you’re worried about the health and safety of 500 carjackers (probably fewer, given potential for repeat offenders). What in the actual fuck?
The only thing I’d be curious about with these numbers is car jackings vs the amount of cars/drivers on the road. That would give a percentage and let us know how common it is.
You guys are talking past one another. It’s extremely common at a population level insofar as its happening literally many times per day at the population level. It is not extremely likely at the individual level because the vehicle miles driven per carjacking is massive with most people never getting car jacked.
Surely you can just take over? You can’t expect the car to run people over for you lol
See now if she had a HUMAN driver, this would have turned out alot differently. But no, we gotta remove another career so Corporations can make more money…
Driving isn’t a job we should be protecting IMO. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying self-driving cars are necessarily the answer either, just that if I had to choose, I’d pick self-driving cars every time over human drivers, provided they’re on well-defined routes with ample testing (like in a city).
We should be solving personal transportation another way, such as:
- mass transit
- segregated bicycle/pedestrian paths
- higher density so popular destinations are closer together
