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.
Exactly, sounds like a publication trying to target two popular subjects
If this is the the most concerning Waymo headline for the month @ 100k rides/week I'd say things are going pretty well on their end
I think this is more concerning for the Secret Service than Waymo.
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.
I think part of the issue is those routes are somewhat unknown ahead of time?
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.
I imagine the Secret Service is considering some kind of routing override for those vehicles.
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?
https://waymo.com/firstresponders/
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.
This kinda sounds like employing the police to do your job.
Police/Fire etc should absolutely have this ability, but that is a seperate issue.
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.
The police should be able to levy some sort of fine/fee for this imo.
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.
Well, they should? Or if they prefer, their insurance will pay on their behalf.
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.
They soon (for some Definition of "soon" ) will be able to do this, according to this article:
"Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday signed a bill that allows law enforcement to cite driverless car companies for traffic violations."
https://sfstandard.com/2024/09/28/waymo-halts-kamala-harris-...
If police/fire get this ability commonly then will they start asking for it with regular cars as well?
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.
Traditionally, this is called “towing”.
block access to a fire hydrant they may break the windows put the car in neutral and move it out of the way
If the driver is incapacitated, they will move the vehicle themselves
Moving a car if the driver is incapacitated or not present?
Police clear debris off the road after an accident. By that logic they’re taking sanitation worker jobs.
view it as a subsidy of the technology, which i think we should be doing
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.
A human drives a car into the Muni Metro tunnel pretty regularly. It makes the news for Waymo because of the novelty.
https://www.ktvu.com/news/cars-drive-in-munis-sunset-tunnel-...
They've all been intoxicated?
> I have some serious concerns over how these cars will impact emergency response in an earthquake or fire
More than meatbags?
The meatbags are panicky apes, but they know how to get out of they way.
Have you ever really watched an emergency vehicle try to get through a traffic clogged road.
The Meatbags most certainly do not now how to get out of the way.
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.
Nope.
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.
I've personally seen more than once the meatbags confuse the accelerator for the brake.
> Can a random person open the door of a Waymo and move it at will?
No, IIRC they all have law enforcement procedures which probably include ability to move car
Need this defcon talk.
Presumably delivered in a keynote from Tony the tow truck driver.
You can hear the police officer speaking with someone through the car open window.
"Autonomous car blocks motorcade" is one chase scene away from a scifi thriller. It truly is the future.
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.
They are now pro-tech since they're campaigning after all: https://qz.com/kamala-harris-is-suddenly-talking-about-crypt...
This feels like I, Robot— except instead of killer robots in a tunnel, we’ve got driverless cars cluelessly blocking motorcades
This would be de rigueur for what Cruise did in Austin, except to everyone else who wasn't a POTUS candidate.
Totally fine to give citations to driverless cars, but can we also start issuing citations to human drivers again too? Its pretty wild out there
See also this discussion on SFPD's citation data: https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/11nbnxw/san_f...
Honestly, Waymo seems to be killing it. If this is what the growing pains look like it’s totally acceptable imo.
I guess we’d say it was a ‘based Waymo’.
FYI for anyone that doesn't drive, this happens with human drivers too.
I helped push a drivered car out of an intersection Thursday.