cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/53250107
Police confirmed they had responded to a report of “criminal mischief involving a robot” on the 1200 block of Filbert Street around 1:16 p.m. on Wednesday. A woman on the scene ignored “multiple commands” to move, they said, resulting in a criminal violation notice for disorderly conduct.
Uber declined to comment.
Marvin, who plans to contest the charge on the grounds of her First Amendment right to protest, has been undeterred by the arrest. She plans to continue blocking Uber Eats robots and chatting with curious passersby who ask what she’s doing.
“It allows me to talk to people about what’s going on,” she said. “It’s always very interesting conversations that we have, and I think it’s good to have those kinds of conversations in public space.”
It’s really not that hard to believe. Waymo will use any available roads to navigate between fares, and it can become especially bad when they’re waiting for fares. Because they don’t just return to a home parking spot and wait between fares. The point is that they want to spread their potential reach (and ensure there are cars nearby regardless of where they’re requested) so they spread out until they need to return to charge/refuel.
They cruise around random backroads and residential areas until a fare requests them. They also avoid U-turns whenever possible, which means they’ll often path through some interesting places just to avoid turning around. They quickly clog residential roads when fares are slow, by all driving in a holding pattern around residential areas that aren’t designed for that kind of through traffic.
Yeah they also have human intervention which kicks most cases far before this could happen but I’m sure this random internet commenter definitely trapped a bunch with cones and held them hostage🤣
Human intervention only automatically kicks in when the car actually thinks it is trapped. Which can easily take a while for larger parking lots.
Also, it’s not a stretch to assume Waymo cuts costs by not having 1:1 coverage of humans to cars and that they triage which cars actually need humans.
👍 definitely happened. In a small internet space you found the edge case. They won’t have video or any evidence but they definitely trapped some Waymo’s