I'm curious how Waymo deals with the human aspects of cab hailing. With a human driver, you can say "hey looks like traffic is bad between where the car currently is and the pick up spot, can I meet you at X instead and save us both 10 minutes?"
To "good morning dear, do you think you could help me load my bag in the trunk"
All the way up to completely degenerate scenarios like "my friend was drunk and tried to take over command of the car to see if it would work" or "I had to call customer support because when my ride arrived to pick me up, there was a homeless guy hogging the backseat and cursing at me".
Surely there's more to commercializing the tech than just not killing pedestrians. The absence of a driver should create some new weird dynamics.
IIRC Uber et al spend a considerable amount on customer support. I wonder if Waymo can break free from Google's bad reputation on that front.
There are a different problems with no-driver, not necessarily worse problems. For example, some problems with drivers that don't exist, or exist to a lesser extent with no-driver:
1. How much should I tip?
2. The driver tried to rape me.
3. The driver seems drunk/high, and is driving horribly.
4. The driver didn't pick me up because, pick your reason: I'm black, had a bunch of kids, etc...
5. My friend was drunk and tried to pick a fight with the driver.
Yeah, definitely goes both ways, and I can foresee many anecdotes about how not having to deal w/ a driver is nicer in some way or another. Hence why I said I'm curious about human-factor issues. I don't believe there's precedents anywhere for what to expect once the tech rolls out at scale, so it's going to be interesting to see what kinds of operational issues they end up running into.
For the first one, I'm guessing you would just change the pickup location just as you tell the drive to meet you somewhere else.
If there's no driver, then there's nobody to ask to help with bags.
For various degenerate situations I'm not sure being driverless really changes the situation all that much. A drunk passenger can grab the wheel of a manned vehicle as well. With a self-driving car you might even be able to avoid that situation entirely by preventing the passengers from using any controls without authorization. They can grab the physical steering wheel but can't turn it until they punch in an authorization code (which they don't have). Likewise you prevent unauthorized passengers from entering the car by keeping the doors locked until the authorized passenger gets there. And if someone does manage to sneak in you just shut down the vehicle and call the cops (just like if someone jumps in a cab without permission).
But humans are great at flummoxing countermeasures like that so it will be an interesting thing to watch for sure.
> For the first one, I'm guessing you would just change the pickup location just as you tell the drive to meet you somewhere else.
To add on, maybe even Waymo tells/asks you if you'd like to change pickup locations to save X minutes off your trip.
Feels somewhat in line with how Google Maps will ask you if you want to save X minutes by taking a new route that was previously not as good as when you started using directions.
To "good morning dear, do you think you could help me load my bag in the trunk"
All the way up to completely degenerate scenarios like "my friend was drunk and tried to take over command of the car to see if it would work" or "I had to call customer support because when my ride arrived to pick me up, there was a homeless guy hogging the backseat and cursing at me".
Surely there's more to commercializing the tech than just not killing pedestrians. The absence of a driver should create some new weird dynamics.
IIRC Uber et al spend a considerable amount on customer support. I wonder if Waymo can break free from Google's bad reputation on that front.