Waymo driverless cars are designed to slow down and stop when a pedestrian crosses by. But what happens when the pedestrian refuses to get out of the road and bothers the passenger inside?A San Francisco woman on Monday posted a video of two catcalling men were stalled a Waymo robot taxi by refusing to move out of the street — all in an effort to ask for her phone number. “Warning to women in SF,” the woman, Amina V., wrote on Twitter/X. “I love Waymo but this was scary.”In the one-minute video, two unidentified men stand directly in front of the Waymo car, preventing it from moving any further, despite a green traffic light. “I have to go! Please, stop, you’re holding traffic,” Amina says in the clip as the two men proceed to smile, and urge her to give over her number. “It left me stuck as the car was stalled in the street,” Amina added in her tweet. “Thankfully, it only lasted a few minutes.”Still, the incident prompted Amina to warn others since the Waymo car seemed incapable of reacting to the catcalling and driving around the human pedestrians. “I was afraid more men would crowd around which thankfully didn’t happen,” she further wrote. Waymo didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But according to Amina, the company called her phone during the incident once she pressed a button in the vehicle to contact customer support. “They asked if I was OK numerous times and followed up with me,” Amina told PCMag in a direct message over Twitter/X. “They asked if I needed police support and I said no.”She added that the incident started when the Waymo stopped on the street during a red traffic light. When one of the men stood in front of the car and refused to leave, the driverless taxi displayed a message on its screen “that said something along the lines of ‘We will help you shortly,’” Amina recalled. Although she’s a fan of self-driving cars, Amina said the “human factor” won’t be an easy challenge for autonomous car companies to solve. Last week, a video went viral showing two people easily stopping a Waymo car, and proceeding to vandalize it, even as the vehicle carried a human passenger and a dog inside.
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On the flip side, the vehicles have also received complaints for getting too close and nearly colliding with pedestrians, including school crossing guards in San Francisco, where Waymo has been offering driverless car rides since 2022. In the meantime, Amina says Waymo should consider adding safety measures to prevent such harassment, including avoiding areas typically full of walking pedestrians. “I may still take them but will be careful taking it alone,” she added in a tweet. She’s previously used Waymo about 10 times. On Twitter/X, Waymo has since responded to her video, saying: “Amina, we’re sorry this happened to you, and appreciate your positive feedback regarding Rider Support. Please know your safety remains our top priority, and we hope you’ll consider riding with us again in the future.”
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About Michael Kan
Senior Reporter
I’ve been working as a journalist for over 15 years—I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017.
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