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Comment by aetherspawn | Hacker News Reader

The guy seemed really impatient, talked over the operator while she was trying to give instructions, and then refused to follow instructions given by the phone operator.

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?

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I'd be impatient too if I was in a robot car that suddenly started driving erratically. There's no way to know whether it's going to continue harmlessly driving around a parking lot or suddenly do something dangerous.

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.

Well, erratic seems like a bit of an exaggeration. It’s continuously driving the same circular route around a parking lot, but it’s not driving on a kerb or anything like that.

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.

With most software I am immediately concerned about what other unforeseen problems might happen as soon as it seems like the system has entered some kind of un- or semi-handled failure state.

It's not illegal, but definitely erratic — the kind of thing the cops might well pull you over for, no? I understand the urgency since having to make a flight is one of the most expensive scheduling issues you could face.

Why would cops pull you over for circling a parking lot a few times?

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.

If it's literally "a few times", maybe not. If it went on for several minutes, and you weren't obviously looking for a space to park, it wouldn't surprise me. Any 'unusual' behaviour in a car is a potential cause for being pulled over.

Unusual, but not erratic. Erratic is unpredictable or jerky movement, as if the car was also swerving side-to-side while going in circles.

Today it is driving in circles, tomorrow it is spinning in circles, next month all your doors lock up in 100 degree heat and your phone dies while you wait for support to pick up. Undefined behavior is undefined behavior.

"hey, you were just stuck in an elevator going erratically up and down never opening the door for you to leave or stop. I don't know why you're freaking out about it"

C'mon.

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 point is, it's still driving entirely safely.

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.

If it does this it might as well drive into a lake or river...

>It seems weird there isn't a physical stop button inside the car.

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 button for a robot car shouldn't immediately disengage all other automation and apply maximum braking as the parent comment seems to be implying. That would, indeed be very dangerous.

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.

Or maybe force a human to interact remotely. That would be preferable.

In his defence, I am imagining this being a really stressful time for the passenger. Many people - most, even - would be panicking at this point, and people react differently and irrationally in these kind of not-in-control scenarios.

> 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

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.

How would someone force a driverless car to get stuck in an infinite loop?

Also, requiring someone to stop the car via an app is appalling. What if there's no phone reception?

I wonder if opening the door a bit would force the car to stop?

Not sure, but the guy did say he couldn't get out.

I bet it would. I read the comments before watching the video, then I watched it. All the comments saying it's a stressful and dangerous situation because it could potentially become a dangerous situation make me facepalm. It must be American "(over-)abundance of caution"...

Or if your phone is out of battery. Or if the app fails, etc. etc.

I get the impression he did not want to change apps as that would interrupt the video, and thus ‘proof’

My first thought was that the guy sounded like an asshole too.

Are you perfectly rational and calm when trapped in a malfunctioning vehicle that could harm you on a whim? I feel it's unfair to judge this person sitting relaxed in front of a computer.

I was askance at him refusing the helpdesk request to do something in the app. One of my hats for decades was support and this feels like someone refusing to tell you what's on their screen, or whether a certain light is on, or to push a button.

"He is holding it wrong"

I felt he was rather calm given that he was inside a malfunctioning autonomous vehicle. If a human taxi driver drove me in circles rather than taking me to my flight I would probably send them the bill!

I mean, I get vibes you work for Waymo based on how speculative and dismissive you are in this comment... but that's probably not the case, eh? Perhaps the vibes are off?

“Please don’t post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you’re worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we’ll look at the data.” https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

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"

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