Technology

These cars need to have a panic button that allows a remote operator to talk to the passengers, assess the situation, alert police and override the auto driving to get them out of bad situations. Same as an emergency call button on an elevator basically. I dont understand these cars to have any feature like that so far, and I'm assuming this woman would have used it if one was available, so please correct me if I'm wrong.

These cars are likely going to turn into hijack machines if they're programmed for "maximum safety" in situations where, realistically, breaking every traffic law, hitting a pedestrian or causing damage to the vehicle through dangerous terrain may be the only way out with a living passenger. The second it begins to percolate among criminals that these things are super easy to stop at the perfect location of your choosing like this, they are going to become a massive target.

Or they turn into a hearse if the passenger has a medical emergency and the car doesn't redirect while the passenger is incapacitated. They might be coherent enough to press a button, but not to open their phone, navigate the app, call for help or redirect the car to a hospital...

But that of course requires labor so it will not happen until legally mandated after a minimum threshold of people die.

literally tipped a fedora

That's a trilby, not a fedora. Narrow brim.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilby

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedora

Waymo should provide a loaded shotgun in every car. It's America, after all.

/s

I can see criminals easily exploiting this default behavior to stop the car and steal from those inside.

Where's a Johnny cab when you need it, it knows how to deal with criminals.

One of the men repeatedly made a “call me” gesture with his hand, then took his fedora off and literally tipped it at her...

It's assholes like this that make dudes in fedoras look bad. This and -you know- the hats themselves.

I'd expect the Waymo video to have captured footage of these guys. It might not be that difficult to track them, and street harassment might well qualify as assault if the DA of San Francisco were interested in prosecuting.

That said, it's telling that they freely and openly harassed a strange woman on the street once the threat of being run over was not a factor.

ETA: One short-term workaround is to tint the windows so that passengers cannot be seen from the outside, but there might be causes to harass occupied Waymo vehicles regardless of the passenger (say, to mug them). I'm curious if this is going to lead to equipping autonomous vehicles with anti-riot ordnance.

I love how he looks like 2 different types of douchebags when he takes his hat off!

Doing things like this when you're certainly being recorded is a great idea. Wait, hold on...

They are quite lucky that woman was not my mother because she'd have pulled out her gun and been like, I told you to move, damnit.

Okay, this really seems more like a case of sexual harassment, rather than harassment of Waymo customers, which was my first suspicion. Had it been the latter as part of a politically motivated action against the company I might have had a lot more sympathy, but this is disgusting…

The fedora tipping is too funny, seeing it from outside the situation, but she certainly was very scared because it's such a bizarre event.

I have to admit, I expected a lot worse from the style of writing. This was written like some true crime stuff lol

Some nasty jerks they are. Well now internationally famous nasty jerks.

Just last week I had to run over some mother fuckers

It do be like that sometimes