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