Photo by Phillip Pessar/Flickr
Audio By Carbonatix
Autonomous driving service Waymo just unlocked a new fear for everyone, and perhaps gave new fodder for Final Destination writers, after a self-driving car trapped a Miami rider on a busy highway for nearly an hour, according to a Reddit post.
In the post, a Reddit user accuses Waymo’s emergency protocol of failing so spectacularly that they nearly ended up in a wreck on the MacArthur Causeway (a popular thoroughfare connecting downtown Miami to South Beach). Waymo began offering its autonomous driving service in Miami in late January, after more than a year of mapping and test drives throughout the Magic City.
The user hailed a Waymo vehicle on Monday to go from the Phillip & Patricia Frost Museum of Science to the Design District, a trip of less than four miles. All lanes of Biscayne Boulevard were closed for construction, the post reads, so the self-driving car used the MacArthur Causeway instead.
“Because Waymo failed to account for construction advisories, the vehicle hit the edge of its Miami geofence and abruptly slammed on its brakes, diagonally blocking the highway on-ramp,” according to the post. “I hailed rider support from the car and demanded we move immediately. The car moved slightly up the ramp but slammed on the brakes again at the edge of the geofence. After being transferred twice, support claimed they needed Highway Patrol to take manual control of the vehicle.”
According to a statement from a Waymo spokesperson, “Safety is our highest priority at Waymo — for our riders and those with whom we share the streets — and while this event did not meet our standard for operational excellence, we learn quickly from such occurrences to continuously improve. We have trained over 1,400 first responders in Miami and Miami Beach to date and will continue to expand our outreach program as we review our systems and processes in coordination with local officials to ensure a better experience for riders in the future.”
But Highway Patrol and Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) workers were seemingly unsure how to resolve the issue, according to the post. FDOT dispatched Road Rangers (not to be confused with Power Rangers), who told Waymo techs that officers would not come out to manually drive the car. The Road Rangers added that they legally couldn’t drive the autonomous vehicle.
So, the rider was trapped for 45 minutes like “a sitting duck” in a dangerous situation on the highway ramp, “watching several cars swerve to avoiding hitting” them, according to the post. Meanwhile, state workers and Waymo employees played the finger-pointing game, a la the Spider-Man meme.
“As a fully licensed Florida driver, I could have easily been granted temporary manual control to simply drive down and turn around to a safe, low-speed city road. Waymo refused,” the user wrote in the Reddit post.
When a Waymo technician, identified as Kenneth, arrived, he apparently refused to approach the vehicle, insisting that FDOT resolve the issue, even after FDOT rangers made it clear that they would not drive the vehicle.
Finally, a hero emerged in a flatbed tow truck to whisk away the immobile robo-taxi. Waymo’s roadside assistance offered the rider another Waymo ride, but — in the most obvious part of this story — they declined. A Road Ranger ended up taking them to Biscayne Boulevard, according to the post.
“This lengthy, dangerous experience exposes massive gaps in Waymo’s processes regarding geofence limitations, construction reroutes, and emergency protocol,” the Reddit user concluded in their post. “These issues must be resolved quickly to move forward in Miami full adoption.”
