The Autonomous Vehicle drop-off spot at SJC airport, where a Waymo left a rider without his bags
Waymo has been scaling fast, now reporting that they do 500,000 rides/week. As this grows, we should expect to see more and more stories about mistakes. The good news is that these mistakes should result in all robots (not just Waymos) learning not to repeat that mistake. But some also offer lessons about the non-robotic part of serving riders.
There are also some new detail from Waymo about these incidents.
Two recent issues involving airport trips didn’t go well for passengers. In the first, a Waymo taking a passenger to SFO Airport detected a tire depressurizing. That was presumably due to road debris, since a robocar would detect any slow leak and go to its depot to deal with it. According to the passenger, the vehicle crossed several lanes of traffic to pull over on the left shoulder, which is not normally the best choice, but Waymo says they selected it because it was closer and wider than the right one.
Not where you want to end up, and there are rules about picking up passengers on freeway shoulders. Waymo indicated to the passenger that a human rescue driver would come to their location, then take them off the freeway to a gas station where they could summon another Waymo. While human ride-hail drivers are known to pick people up who get stuck on a freeway, officially only emergency stops are allowed there, so you need a specially trained driver or tow truck. Waymo won’t be as “flexible" about the law for obvious reasons.
