Man trapped inside driverless car as it spins in circles
bbc.com
bbc.com
Judging by how short the video is, I’m assuming that when he just did the 2-click thing the operator told him to do on his phone, the Waymo probably stopped and let him out.
I get vibes he did it on purpose for social media. For example, you’re supposed to be at the airport an hour before your flight, and here he is winging about a Waymo going in circles for a couple mins and threatening to send the bill for his flight to the operator? Eh?
I probably would have looked for a stop button in the app before calling a phone number because that's faster. It seems weird there isn't a physical stop button inside the car.
You can see on the map that it goes into the drop off lane, for some reason thinks it can’t drop him off, so drives back into the car park, turns around, and heads back into the drop off lane. It’s not like it’s stuck in full lock doing donuts.
This is extremely normal driver behavior at airports when you're waiting for someone arriving to come out, and you're not allowed to stop at the curb for longer than a minute.
Sitting inside a malfunctioning robot taxi, helplessly, with no clarity why its doing that. And being afraid it could do some thing more erratic, like going fast and hit a wall, or do some other life threatening thing.
Bugs like these are not acceptable in machines where humans sit.
The headline is clickbait -- the car absolutely was not "spinning in circles".
It was driving around a parking lot multiple times.
I agree that clarity would be appreciated -- since this seems to be a routing issue, if the car explained it couldn't find a spot to stop so it was going around again. But of all the problems a self-driving car could have, safely repeating a loop around a parking lot is about as benign as you can get.
Think it through once more.
For the down voters: It would be extremely dangerous if somebody pressed such a button when the car is going down the highway. The real world is not a video game where you can just abort or pause at any time. If you try, you will die.
An emergency stop routine should involve a code path designed to bring the car to a stop in a safe location as soon as practical. It should be thoroughly tested on degraded hardware with minimal branching relative to normal operation. It should also activate the hazard lights, contact the operator's emergency department, unlock all the doors, and lower the windows.
That's not really good though. It is not his job to fix the car. His protestation that the operator should do it, whatever "it" is, is a reasonable one.
Also, requiring someone to stop the car via an app is appalling. What if there's no phone reception?
I obviously don't think the person I'm responding to works at Waymo. The person I'm responding to is making a baseless claim that this is a manufactured issue. How do you degrade a discussion that starts at the lowest possible place when the claim is "the vibes are off"
You are the hero of every young child that has ever been on a train and wondered what would happen when they pulled that cord. I know that certainly was a dream of mine when I was four or so. I couldn't understand why my dad was so insistent I not try it.
Is it embarassing for Waymo? Sure. But the BBC basically lied to you here, and you bought it. The circumstance you're imagining is not what happened. Just watch the video.
And if you hear that the car has run over a child that the operator didn't notice and is dragging it down the pavement under the car, it's essential for you to be able to hit the E-stop button rather than calling an operator to eventually stop the car.
It was like two minutes, tops. Again, it's on video!
And I love that you started from a position of needing an emergency escape button and when challenged it's... because the occupant might have to pee really bad.
Accusing other people of lying when they point out your whoppers is... not good faith argument.
But it's not true, which makes you a liar as well.
Comments like that one undermine my faith in the capacity of humanity for goodness. You managed to combine dishonesty, unprovoked rhetorical aggression, engineering irresponsibility, and fantasies of a breathtaking degree of sadism into a few short lines. It's honestly one of the most contemptible comments I've ever seen on HN.
It certainly did not. It's right up above, please re-read.
Just stop. You got yourself into an embarrassing situation with an untenable argument and are behaving badly, calling your fellow posters liars and assholes.
Sounds like a recipe for failure, to be honest. In a potentially life or death situation, the last thing I want is to rely on a remote human being. Plus, if the device entered an erroneous state, I certainly don't trust it to correctly interpret a remote "emergency stop" signal.
If the machine goes crazy (and there is no world where driving around a parking lot until the end of time is the rational expected behavior), the only safe option is a big, red, cut-circuit emergency stop button.
Which, once more, was not happening here. The car was lost, not out of control. And the built-in solution was applied, and worked.
What do you really want here? You've never been in a Uber that took a wrong turn? Never argued with a cab driver about a route? Never been stuck in an airliner at the end of a runway waiting for clearance? Vehicles do things their occupants don't like all the time, and no one freaks out on the internet about it.
> You've never been in a Uber that took a wrong turn? Never argued with a cab driver about a route?
If a cab driver keeps cricling on a parking lot, again and again and again, never finding the obvious exit, I'll get a bit concerned and eventually tell him "OK, never mind, I'll find another way, just drop me there". If he refuses to let me off, and locks the doors, and keeps circling, I'll be extremely anxious. This is horror movie material.
Isn't that exactly what happened here? Rider pushed the help button, got help, and was dropped off. Right there.
I think you get to the truth of the matter with your "horror movie material" quip. You don't think this situation was dangerous. You think it was scary because of the robot. Well, OK. But that's not a safety argument.
Airliners are legally required to have emergency exit doors that can be activated by anyone inside the airliner as long as the cabin isn't pressurized. You also know, before you board the airliner, that you won't be able to get off it for several hours. So, if you have an appointment with your probation officer in half an hour or need to pick up your kids from school in half an hour, you won't board in the first place.
You're apparently arguing that passengers of self-driving cars should not have the same legal and mechanical protections that the passengers of these other types of vehicles have.
That's bad engineering, because you can always get to some kind of catastrophe if you keep piling on layers. Might as well just skip to "What if the motor circuit fails open and it accelerates forever?!" in that case.
And... you did.
Also passenger might be inebriated and randomly push the button.
While I agree with you on principle, it's a hard problem to solve.
Modern societies are reasonably able to cope with potential misuse of publicly-accessible emergency equipment. Buildings have fire alarms. Airplanes have emergency exits with self-deploying slides. Trains have emergency brakes passengers can activate.
Misusing any of these can create a danger to others and is sure to be very disruptive. People do on occasion, and face punishment for their actions.
Also, as multiple people have pointed out, all non-self-driving cars already have this feature; it's called a brake pedal. Providing it should not be controversial.
Anyone can slam the brakes in the middle of a highway.
I'm assuming the e-stop button would not be right next to the blinker.
You are on a beta, experimental, self driving vehicle. The time to update your life insurance has passed.
The CEO of HypeAI releases a heartfelt video in which they say they are truly sorry for my family's loss and by way of compensation offers them unlimited credits for HypeRides in select US cities conditions apply.
Violating these rules will impact your account standing and may lead to permanent revocation of ride privileges..."
That means it has to decide whether it's safe to stop.
Stopping safely is no less complicated than the self-driving software in general. Sure you can have backup driver software, but it's just going to be the same software.
It does not have to be the same software. Its task is much simpler, and many situations where the normal software has to look for an optimal resolution can be handled by activating the hazard lights, stopping the car, and telling the passengers that the emergency stop is complete.
It's not a dangerous situation for the passenger but it definitely something that makes you feel very uncomfortable which could lead to panic because you're trapped. The doors are locked and even if they weren't you cannot simply exit the car. That's okay. Trains don't allow this either to open the doors on a track section. You need a supervisor to do that. In case of an emergency you can still unlock the doors mechanically. So after pulling the emergency brake you can still do that. It would be interesting how these cars behave in case of a fire inside or something which leads me to my final thought:
In case of issues on or with a ride in a theme park, there are usually operators. So in case of a technical malfunction there's an emergency stop which should make disarm systems in a safe manner and bring the ride into a safe position or at least make sure it stops safely. Of course it's not possible to trigger an e-stop as passenger but an operator can do that in case you can somehow make clear that it's needed right now.
The situation in the video is a very bad experience because a phone call from the passengers device is needed and he was asked to do something in the app. Probably to identify the car and enable the remote control. Elevators handle this much better. There's an emergency system in the cabin which transmits all important information to the service center, so it's immediately clear where the emergency call originated from. An app on a smartphone should never replace this installation!
When I pulled the emergency stop cord on the train, I also pulled the emergency door opening lever. The doors opened, on a track section. I've used an emergency door opening lever more recently when the train had already stopped and we were being instructed to exit because of a mechanical problem (possibly a fire), but that was at a station.
Elevators, in my experience, also universally have E-stop buttons or switches.
The ‘trapped’ man is the CEO of an AI consulting firm. He posted the video to linked in, didn’t press the abort button, and had a relatively successful customer support experience (5 minutes delayed and not charged for the trip). Apparently he is using a PR firm to handle questions.
Make of that what you will. Waymo can clearly do better, although for what it’s worth — my worst uber experiences have been much worse than this (legitimately unsafe driving decisions).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0
It's very possible that it won't be the utopia it is portrayed to be.
I'm genuinely worried for the future if we keep going down this path. And all the hard work by urbanists will be undone.
NJB radicalised me, in the best way possible.
I expect much more by now. I would expect that if anything cars would be actively protecting humans. If a toddler wanders into the road without a parent I would expect them by now to use a PA speaker to alert people and actively create a blockade around the child with only room for humans to pass, flash all their lights continuously and video stream to safety personnel on duty with the vehicle maker.
I don't think it's a mental illness, just an extreme form of utilitarian ethics combined with an unreasonable faith in the outcome.
Of course, it's reasonable to be frustrated, especially if you're in a hurry, but anyone who has been in a vehicle accident in an Uber or taxi will know that there's just some inherent risk involved when you're getting into a car with another driver, just as there is risk involved when getting into a car and driving yourself, and I think the idea that a robot driver could fail and get stuck is something that you just have to be mindful of and account for, the same way you have to be mindful of the risk of getting stuck on an elevator. Without seeing the remainder of the altercation it's hard to judge if Waymo's design is lacking for fallbacks here. Another question would be what can be done if the passenger can't access the Waymo app; would they have to jump into the driver's seat?
Requiring the user to press buttons on an app, and not being able to do it for them is just one example. Plenty of other videos show they can't control the car, and all they can do is talk to the user.
At a minimum, they should have the ability to stop the car and drive it, remote control, at 1 mph, to get it unstuck or out of the way.
Maybe the solution is a car rental service where the car drives to you, you drive where you want to go, then just leave the car.
In Boston anyway navigating pickup/ drop off at the airport is tricky for people.
Yep. Like virtually every phone support person ever. You would think that with driverless cars this would be different.
Not sure acting the ignorant consumer makes me trust the supposed dangerous situation you are in isn't manufactured in some way.
"Mike Johns is an exceptional AI expert speaker specializing in AI", whatever you say man
Still, typical of poorly designed software.
I read that Model S accelerates at more than 1g and I think it has 1000 nm of "instant torque" from zero. Roadster has 10000 nm. They say top notch mechanical disc braking can decelerate at less than 1.3g tops. Should be enough for 700 nm but seems like even many consumer grade EV literally can't stop with your foot if electronic brain doesn't cooperate.
As an aside, spurious ABS activation is a form of runaway car automation that has been possible for decades. It is terrifying to experience.
It's true that it's probably over in a short time, but that is easily a stressful enough situation to cause people to have panic attacks, heart attacks, and have a range of other issues.
I would almost argue that it's negligent of Waymo to not have a kill switch they can remotely fire, and then another layer of kill switch, and then another 5 layers of kill switches...
You can't fail to control a driverless car under any circumstance.