They will have to handle the case where the passenger doesn't exit the vehicle somehow or another. But the fact that it is occurring in an automated vehicle shouldn't make anyone worse off.
If the passenger doesn't exit the vehicle after a set time, start a video call to a support central (perhaps the person is unable to get out because the doors won't unlock? or they fell asleep?) The attendant could then instruct the vehicle to go to a pre-specified location nearby where a human can intervene, call another vehicle or notify the competent authorities.
But I agree with the overall point, while occasional incapacitated passengers or manual intervention may occur, these are not insurmountable problems.
Ride is avg $10, vehicle is ~$30,000 satellite uplink is ~1200 per year. BOFH guy watching is ~$65k per year... insurance is ~$2400/ year...
so if we take that, we have an annual cost of (assuming life of care is 3 years) 10000+65000+1200+2400 - so ~80K per year per car... and / BOFH among his volume to monitor N cars....
but we extract the BOFH from the car model.
so we have a per car cost of 15K per year
and we have an avg rider value of 10 per ride, and a ride volume of 1,500 rides per month / BOFHs required / insurance claim / lawsuits
and we can suss out the model pretty well... but there are a lot more inputs.
and if this is going to be a service to public from multi-parties, we'd better understand this model....
and they'd better be standard on the CARNOC