Driverless cars promise to be a game-changing mode of transportation. They’re already out and about in some cities, serving taxi duty, with varying levels of success. Unfortunately, though, these are also naive, vulnerable machines that are easily taken advantage of by bad actors. We’re seeing this play out all too regularly right now.
I spoke to Amina this week on this very topic. She’s a San Francisco local, and she’s used Waymo to get around the city on multiple occasions without fuss. However, just a few days ago, she says her ride went very differently.
During her journey, Amina’s Waymo came to a halt at a red light. As shown in her 58 second video posted to X formerly known as Twitter, a man can be seen approaching and blocking the way; the video then shows him asking for her phone number. The driverless car stopped firm, unwilling to drive with humans in the roadway ahead. Amina was stuck with nowhere to go.
????Warning to women in SF ????
I love Waymo but this was scary ????
2 men stopped in front of my car and demanded that I give my number.
It left me stuck as the car was stalled in the street.
Thankfully, it only lasted a few minutes…
Ladies please be aware of this pic.twitter.com/6VEqb1WoJb
— Amina (@Amina_io) September 30, 2024
“The car was stopped at a red light and the first man came over and stood in front of the car,” she says. “This caused the car to stop and refuse to move with a message on its screen that said something along the lines of ‘We will help you shortly.'” This was, by and large, the expected behavior for an autonomous vehicle—to stop when a person stands in front of it. The problem is that it left Amina in a difficult situation.
The man can be seen stepping away for a second, then returning with company. “The men came over to the car again and stood in front of it for a few minutes,” she says. In her video, one can be seen waving repeatedly with a “call me” gesture, as she yells repeatedly—”Go! GET OUT!” After some time, the two men can be seen finally leaving the roadway, one tipping his hat for some unfathomable reason.
Due to the unexpected situation, the Waymo had stopped for safety reasons. “Finally when they left, the car was still stalled,” says Amina. Thankfully, she was promptly able to get help with the issue. “I clicked the ‘in car support’ on the screen and they seemed to be aware of the issue,” she explains. “They asked if I was OK, and the car began to drive towards my location.” The Waymo operator asked if she needed police support, which she declined.
She says Waymo staff followed up with her after the event, too. “When I nearly arrived at the location, the in-car support called me again to make sure I was okay,” she says. “I assured him that I was fine and he told me I would be given a free ride after.” Hours later, she got a follow-up call, too. “They asked if I was OK and told me that they have 24/7 support available,” she says.
Amina was stuck in an uncomfortable situation in a car that refused to move. Exiting the vehicle would be a particularly unattractive option in this case, too. This is a difficult case for an autonomous system to deal with. It can’t reasonably move forward without risking injury to pedestrians, nor can it conceivably understand when pedestrians are being massive jerks.
It’s an interesting thought exercise to contrast this with a human driver. While some might be tempted to simply drive forward, that’s a course of action that could lead to legal difficulties. The courts often look poorly on drivers who intentionally run people over. However, the human mind is far more adaptable than an autonomous driving system. One could have potentially reversed, switched lanes, or veered around the men when they weren’t directly in front of the vehicle. Or just laid on the horn like crazy.
It’s a simple human desire to have some level of control in situations like these. An autonomous vehicle offers none.
It’s apparent that people are well aware of how easy it is to mess with these vehicles. Last week, we saw an eerily similar situation where a group of vandals surrounded a Waymo car to graffiti the vehicle. Once more, the vehicle dutifully held position while it was defaced by the group.
Here’s what Waymo told us at the time:
Though these events are exceedingly rare over the hundreds of thousands of trips we provide each month, we take them very seriously and work with law enforcement if they occur. The trust and safety of the community is our top priority, both for people who choose to ride with us and with whom we share the streets.
The Autopian has reached out to Waymo for comment on this most recent matter.
While these incidents are concerning, they haven’t entirely dulled Amina’s enthusiasm for the technology. “I was in a pretty severe car accident as a child and have anxieties around driving due to it, [so] I’ve been looking forward to this type of technology for a long time,” she says. “With that said, I think the human factor in this issue is going to be a lot harder to solve than anything else.” Her belief is that this technology will be safer with widespread adoption.
Amina thinks that with the right measures, Waymo could be safer than it currently is. “Personal safety measures I can take include sitting in the driver’s seat to give the illusion of control or sitting in the backseat where the windows are tinted,” she says. Notably, though, Waymo does not actually allow riders to sit in the driver’s position. “On Waymo’s side of things, they can encourage the cars to avoid driving in the Tenderloin or certain areas of SOMA… certain areas have a higher amount of people running in the streets which would probably increase incidents like this happening.”
Few of us would enjoy being stuck in a vehicle that could potentially be easily trapped by cruel interlopers with bad intentions. Giving up control to an autonomous system is not ideal when it comes with drawbacks like these. For now, though, there isn’t a good answer on how autonomous cars should deal with these situations.
Image credits: Waymo, Amina_io via Twitter screenshot
Keep Summer Safe.
There’s got to be a way to put an assault charge on these guys. (Not battery)
San Francisco has had oddball people and bizarre interactions – especially in that part of town – for decades.
When I lived there from ’92-’13, there were certain streets in the Tenderloin and SOMA you simply avoided as a driver – mainly because you’d have people darting into the street randomly with no care for their own safety.
Then there were certain people on Muni who would run across the street in traffic just to catch a bus or streetcar – when they’d get hit by a car or a bus, it would make the evening news, but nobody was really surprised (except for the dead person and the driver)
I remember watching Critical Mass the last Fridays of the months and seeing some unnecessarily aggressive interactions between drivers and bicyclists – it was relatively normal for frustrated out of towners to honk and yell, while those of us who lived there just turned off our motors and calmly let the bikers do their thing, because being late for a date or dinner in SF was perfectly acceptable when you uttered the words “Critical Mass”, “Parking is awful tonite” or “Muni was delayed”
Almost any time of day in many parts of town one could observe the bike messengers weaving in and out of traffic, or racing down the hills on their fixies, frequently out of control and nearly impossible to stop. They typically congregated at the Mechanics Monument at Market, Bush and Battery – with an unmistakeable cloud of BO and 420 surrounding them.
I personally dealt with aggressive drivers in the Financial District and Union Street who didn’t feel the need to stop for pedestrians properly crossing at signals.
This type of thing is unsurprising to a San Franciscan – The only thing that’s new is that there’s not a person in the driver’s seat to honk, yell or steer around the silliness.
Yes – and that intersection (9th and Mission) is all kinds of crazy. No excuse for it though.
I usually like the guy, but this time Willem Dafoe went too far harasing the poor girl in his white beanie
THE FREAKING TRILBY. I JUST CAN’T.
It’s like this guy crawled straight out of an incel forum. Yuck.
#niceguys
I will never forgive the alt-right for appropriating the world’s most stylish piece of haberdashery and turning it into a neon sign indicating “toolbag”.
-signed, a non-toolbag who owns a fedora and actually looks good in it
Goshdarnit! Yeah, that stinks. I don’t think it’s necessarily an alt-right thing, though — just a sad, weird, lonely guy thing when it’s in a dorky, ill-fitting context (like this). If you can rock it, rock it. Own that hat. You shouldn’t have to change your hat. They’re the ones who suck.
That’s pretty scary when you think about those internet videos of people hanging out on overpasses at night, trying to jump in front of your car so they can carjack you. If your car stops immediately and there’s 10 people walking up, pulling on door handles, I’m not even sure what you could do.