a man just discovered that robotaxis can do it too

It is an automatic thought when we check a suitcase: please don’t let me lose it. The airlines They have improved baggage managementbut millions of incidents continue to be recorded every year and it is something that has happened to practically all of us who have taken a few planes. What is not so common is that the person who loses your suitcase is a robotaxi, or rather we should say the one who steals it from you.

what has happened. They tell it in Futurism. A few days ago, a man ordered a Waymo robotaxi to go to the San Jose airport in California. The journey went well, it was upon arriving at the airport that the problem arose. The passenger was able to get out of the taxi without problem, but when he tried to open the trunk to retrieve his suitcase, it did not open and the robotaxi left, leaving him without the luggage that he had prepared for his trip.

Waym’s responseeither. The first thing the passenger, whose name is Di Jin, did was call Waymo customer service in the hopes they could get the taxi back with his suitcase. However, the person who assisted him told him that the car was on its way to the warehouse and that it was impossible to change its route. Jin decided to take the plane anyway and later tried to get Waymo to send his luggage, but the response was that he had to go pick it up himself. In statements to NBCJin states that “It doesn’t make any sense because it wasn’t my mistake (…) I pressed the button to open the trunk and it just didn’t work”

Why is it important. When autonomous driving is questioned, we often focus on safety and overlook incidents like this. What happened to this passenger perfectly illustrates that there is a whole dimension of failures more focused on user experience in unexpected situations. These are errors that a human driver resolves intuitively and quickly, but in this case it became a very complicated situation full of obstacles.

The problem is not just security. In China, a system failure caused more than 100 taxis will stop in the middle of the city. In California, several passengers were trapped inside a Waymo because a passerby attacked the car and it crashed. Self-driving taxis have proven to be a safe and effective means of transportation, myself I tried one a few days ago in China and I was surprised how integrated it is into the dense city traffic. What we are seeing most lately are not so much accidents, but problems of this type more related to practical problems that do not affect a taxi with a driver.

Image | Xataka

In Xataka | The robotaxis did not need a driver, but Waymo has ended up paying delivery drivers to close ajar doors