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Are you saying that there are times when a Waymo car's ability to respond to events is at the mercy of a random Internet connection? What happens if the safety driver is steering remotely, from another town, and there's packet loss for a couple of seconds in the middle of a curve?

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Again, they don’t drive or steer remotely. What sometimes happens is a multiple choice question is presented to the operator in an ambiguous situation:

<photo of construction zone> Can I drive through here? [Yes] [No]

When this is happening, the car is stopped and lets the passenger know that it’s reaching out for remote help to figure out what to do. For me this has happened two times across my 125 Waymo rides (571 miles) so far, and was resolved in under 20 seconds. Though I must say, 20 seconds feels like ages when you’re in the car and blocking traffic!

I agree with you, I was just highlighting for the other poster how difficult/crazy/riskier remote driving would be.

In that case if the car isn't able to decide what to do, it stalls in the middle of the street. Happens all the time in SF.

It's probably not accurate to say that the remote operator is "steering" though. It's more like pathfinding.

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