SF Chronicle – Here’s what happens if you pass out in a Waymo robotaxi on New Year’s Eve
Editors note: AI for vomit detection. Finally AI has found a good purpose!
See original article by Maliya Ellis at SF Chronicle
It’s New Year’s Eve in San Francisco, you’ve had one too many drinks while celebrating, and you’ve got no designated driver. These days, that familiar problem has a new solution: a sleek white chariot with no driver to judge your drunkenness. A Waymo.
But say you’ve had two — or perhaps 10 — too many. What happens if you pass out in a Waymo?
The robotaxi’s first sign that something’s wrong is if no one opens the door once the autonomous car reaches its destination, according to a Waymo spokesperson.
That’s when the driverless vehicle’s many cameras come into play. The cameras, which use a machine-learning model trained on “specific real-time use cases,” can determine whether a rider is incapacitated, the spokesperson said. (The cameras can also determine whether a rider is smoking inside, or not wearing a seatbelt.)
Then Waymo’s human employees will take a look with their own eyes. Though most of the company’s staff can only see a “blurred version” of the car’s interior through its cameras, the uncensored, live feed is available to a small number of authorized employees, the spokesperson said.
If the robotaxi and the human agree that the rider is passed out, one of Waymo’s “rider support agents” will reach out to the rider “after a while” using the car’s customer service interface and ask whether they need help, the spokesperson said. Finally, if the rider still doesn’t respond, the agent will contact emergency personnel.
That hasn’t happened yet, at least not in San Francisco, according to Fire Department Lt. Mariano Elias. The department has responded to other Waymo-related calls, like when a teenager allegedly set a Waymo ablaze in February, or when a man stalled a Waymo to talk to a woman inside, he said, but not to any reports of incapacitation in the robotaxis.
By contrast, it’s “pretty common” for the department to receive a 911 call from an Uber or Lyft driver about a passenger passed out in a vehicle, even more so on New Year’s Eve, Elias said.
But if the department were to receive a report of someone incapacitated in a Waymo, Elias said, the protocol wouldn’t be too different from a medical emergency in any other vehicle — emergency personnel would assess the situation and provide medical help if needed.
The only difference might be that Waymo employees would have to unlock the car’s doors remotely to let fire personnel in, which Elias said they’ve done in other Waymo-related emergencies. “Worst case scenario, we’ll break the window,” Elias said.
Waymo did not provide an estimate on how often intoxication-related incapacitation happens in its robotaxis, but a spokesperson said such incidents happen “infrequently in the context of the over 150,000 trips served each week across our markets.” The company opened rides to the public in San Francisco in June, and in August expanded its service area to include Daly City, Broadmoor and Colma.
The perils of riding drunk pale in comparison to the dangers of driving drunk, especially during the holidays. Drunken driving deaths in December are the highest they’ve been in 15 years, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data from 2022, the most recent data year available. That December, 1,062 people died in drunken driving-related crashes, the most since 2007, NHTSA said.
Waymo markets itself as a way to avoid drunken driving, and the company has partnerships with Mothers Against Drunk Driving and Students Against Destructive Decisions (formerly Students Against Driving Drunk), according to a spokesperson.
“Waymo encourages its autonomous ride-hailing platform as one way in which a person can get home safely after drinking,” the spokesperson said. “To do so effectively, we encourage riders to double check that their pick up and drop off locations are correct before hailing their ride.”
One last word to the wise: If you throw up in a Waymo, you might be spared the embarrassment of a disgusted driver, but you’ll still get hit with a cleaning fee.
Reach Maliya Ellis: maliya.ellis@hearst.com; X: @EllisMaliya; Bluesky: @maliyaellis.bsky.social
See original article by Maliya Ellis at SF Chronicle
