Waymo driverless cars are designed to slow down and stop when a pedestrian crosses. But what happens when the pedestrian refuses to get out of the way and disturbs the passenger inside?
A San Francisco woman posted a video Monday of two men hailing a Waymo taxi robot as it refuses to get out of the way — all in an attempt to ask for her phone number.
“Warning to women in SF,” wrote the woman, Amina V., on Twitter/X. “I love Waymo, but this was scary.”
In the minute-long video, two unidentified men stand directly in front of the Waymo car, preventing it from moving forward despite the green light. “I have to go! Please stop, you’re holding up traffic,” Amina says in the clip as the two men continue to smile and urge her to hand over her number.
“Left me stuck as the car was stuck on the road,” Amina added in her tweet. “Thankfully, it only lasted a few minutes.”
However, the incident prompted Amina to warn others as the Waymo car seemed unable to respond to calls and movement around human pedestrians. “I was afraid that more men would gather, which thankfully did not happen,” she wrote further.
Waymo did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But according to Amina, the company called her phone during the incident after she pressed a button on the vehicle to contact customer support. “They asked me if I was okay multiple times and followed me around,” Amina told PCMag in a direct message on Twitter/X. “They asked me if I needed police support and I said no.”
She added that the incident began when Waymo stopped on the road during a red light. When one of the men stood in front of the car and refused to leave, the driverless taxi displayed a message on its screen “that said something along the lines of ‘We’ll help you soon,'” Amina recalled.
Although she is a fan of self-driving cars, Amina said the “human factor” will not be an easy challenge for autonomous car companies to solve. Last week, a video went viral showing two people easily stopping a Waymo car and continuing to vandalize it, even though the vehicle was carrying a human passenger and a dog inside.
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On the other hand, the vehicles have also received complaints about getting too close and nearly crashing into pedestrians, including school crossing guards in San Francisco, where Waymo has been offering self-driving car rides since 2022.
Meanwhile, Amina says Waymo should consider adding security measures to prevent such harassment, including avoiding areas typically full of walking pedestrians. “I can still take them, but I’ll be careful taking them alone,” she added in a tweet. She has previously used Waymo about 10 times.
On Twitter/X, Waymo has since responded to her video, saying, “Amina, we’re sorry this happened to you and we appreciate your positive feedback about Rider Support. Please know that your safety remains our top priority, and we hope you will consider riding with us again in the future.”
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About Michael Kahn
Senior reporter
