I just watched a scary movie -- from the backseat of a self-driving Waymo car in Chandler, Ariz.
Waymo has egg on its face after an incident this weekend where its robotaxi blocked traffic and then, inexplicably sped away from approaching technicians twice before finally freezing up, like a Microsoft system on my computer. The only thing missing was the blue, spinning circle.
YouTuber Joel Johnson was the passenger and you get the impression he documents Waymo rides a lot. He has been stranded at least twice before and knew the protocol that Waymo followed when a passenger was stranded. He was very familiar with the route and the path planning -- the strategy Waymo was using to navigate his route. The ride was pretty boring for the first 15 minutes until the Waymo car pulls up to an intersection where orange construction cones had been put up to block the far right lane of the street on which it was attempting to complete a righthand turn.
I would have found the entire experience frightening and maddening. The 20 minute ride took 35 minutes. Imagine if this made you late for a business meeting. But Johnson was downright giddy. He even let out a gleeful giggle in anticipation of the story he was going to get out of this.
The Waymo car was paralyzed for at least 5 minutes. Johnson was helpless to do anything about it, even if he got out of the backseat and crawled into the front seat. How would you take over steering? Cars behind him were honking their horns. There is a glass partition, it seems, that separates passengers from the front seat, like you would see in a New York City taxi. You can see Johnson's reflection in the glass as he is waving his arms to motion other cars to go around the stalled Waymo car.
The woman working the assistance desk called Joel to reassure him that help was only 5 minutes away. Just as the technicians seem to arrive at the scene. The Waymo car takes off and tries to run over the cones. It stops again, now blocking traffic as there is very little room to get around on the left. "All these people honking," Joel says to the woman. "It's not going to fix anything."
Finally, a construction worker starts directing traffic. You can see the cars are passing on the left in what looks to be a turn lane. There is construction on the other side of the road, so a normal five-lane road is reduced to two. Johnson motions for the construction worker to come to the window. He rolls it down. "Apologies, sir. The assistance team is almost here. They'll fix it. Sorry about that."
"They can't move it no way?" the construction worker asks. "They will in a second. Somebody is gonna ..." Johnson's sentence is interupted by a car honking.
Seconds later, the car starts moving again. The joy ride last another minute until the Waymo car encounters more cones. "It really does not like these cones," Johnson says to the woman. It comes to a complete stop and turns on its hazard lights. "What a sweet video this is going to be. Hahaha."
After about 5 minutes, the car starts up again, just as the technician is walking up to it. The second joy ride only lasts seconds and the car came to a stop a second time. "The car should not take off," the woman interjects, trying to alleviate any fears. "It should not move."
Can you imagine hearing that and trying to suppress the panic welling up inside you? Very reassuring, Waymo.
After nearly 30 minutes, the autonomous thrill ride ends and a technician is able to get in the front seat and take control of the runaway, wayward Waymo.
Thankfully, no one was hurt or killed. Waymo seems to have a substantial support system. There is a person monitoring the entire ride and is reachable by phone if you need some help. There is a mobile support crew that is minutes away should there be a problem. The car seemed to keep the speed limit at all times and, impressively, kept up with the traffic. And, when confused, it stopped. That's better than if it just charged blindly into unknown road situations, hoping for the best.
Will this derail autonomous efforts, like the infamous Uber accident in 2018? I hope not. But it should give AV companies pause.
I am reminded of a couple of things.
When I started my business in February, 2018, my first client was an Israeli startup called Phantom Auto. It was created for situations such as these. It would take over the driving remotely when they were edge cases like this. The remote driver could be hundreds of miles away.
We were doing a b-roll shoot on Embarcadero in downtown San Francisco at about 4:30 a.m., when traffic was light. I was in the trailing vehicle just to block traffic. We had a minivan in the left lane shooting car-to-car at the right lane. The sun was coming up. It was beautiful and scary -- all at the same time. The "driver" was back in Mountain View, at the Phantom office, more than 50 miles away. Nothing happened out of the ordinary. And we covered less than a mile but my heart was pounding the entire time.
It was so eerie seeing an empty car moving, no driver, no passenger. LIke the Stephen King novel, Christine.
Second, we need a regulatory roadmap. As Foretellix reminds us, we need to move from physical testing in a mechanical engineering world to software testing for the most ambitious endeavor man has ever attempted. Our current approach to testing will take 500 years because we can't isolate edge cases safely on the road. An edge case is any rarity to you encounter that isn't normal -- like traffic cones when the lane should be clear. Foretellix can compress that testing window and accelerate the testing process. More importantly, it can let you know what test areas you have suitably solved and which problems still need work.
I'm encouraged by the work of Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, D- Michigan, to do just that. She is proposing a bill to map out what we must do to regulate autonomous driving.
And if Congress drags its feet, I say we subject them to mandatory rides in the Waymo robotaxi in Chandler. Give them a Joel Johnson-type ride and see if they aren't motivated to take action.
Which sets up a bad joke. What takes longer -- a self-driving Waymo car navigating a traffic cone or Congress making a decision? We'll see.
And now for the rest of the news. (And today is my 36th Anniversary. Happy Anniversary, Deb.)
Scott