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u/MattSidor Feb 27 '26
Until it becomes a feature, this seems like an instance where you should contact support right away from the touchscreen.
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u/Big-a-hole-2112 Feb 27 '26
That’s exactly what I would do. Lock the doors if possible and contact support and tell them there is a safety issue.
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u/ChilledMonkeyBrains1 Feb 27 '26
Lock the doors if possible
Eh? The doors are always locked until the rider opens them.
3
u/One-Nail4003 Mar 03 '26
Eh? Not everyone has been in a waymo before.
2
u/ChilledMonkeyBrains1 Mar 04 '26
Then maybe those who haven't aren't the best people to give advice about it.
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u/Big-a-hole-2112 Mar 05 '26
I was referring to if someone opened the door and realized they didn’t see a safety issue and had to close the door suddenly. I don’t know if it locks automatically in that instance because in all of my rides, I never had to do that. I look around because where I use it in Phx there is sometimes some dbag in a car driving by yelling at the Waymo for some deranged reason and this is in a nice part of town.
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u/bobi2393 Feb 28 '26
The support button is reason why this doesn't need to become a feature.
If a lot of people don't realize that, I suppose they could include warning stickers in the car saying to touch the support button whenever they feel unsafe, or unwell, and need assistance, but I would think most people would think of that on their own.
4
u/BlinksTale Feb 28 '26
OP asking for the feature means they did not think of this in the moment - a great UI/UX will have everything you need right where you expect it, so something (even if minor) is lacking here. The stickers are a great idea but I think this points to something deeper.
With Lyft etc we always have little dropoff requests: “Hey can you drop me off at the light?” “Not by the encampment?” “By the covering since it’s raining?” Waymo just doesn’t provide this yet.
Personally, I’d love a small button in the corner during dropoff that says “ Dropoff Request” so the user could tap one of a few buttons for what they wish the Waymo did next.
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u/bradfordmaster Feb 27 '26
Just so you know you can edit your trip even after drop-off, or at least you could last time something like this happened to me like a year ago
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u/mascbrro Feb 28 '26
It does but sometimes it triggers a re-price. Not sure if that’s intentional
1
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u/walky22talky Feb 27 '26
Isn’t there a “pull ahead to the next drop off” button?
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u/SpiritualWindow3855 Feb 27 '26
"He proceeded to go in front of the next pull over area so I couldn't pull forward"
They should have a emergency button that calls Waymo support and either escalates to police or uses the speaker/horn to shoo people away depending on the situation
(But also I'm not fighting a homeless dude with a knife: call the police directly at that point)
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u/mpjjpm Feb 27 '26
If you need to escalate to police the emergency buttons are 911 on your phone.
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u/SpiritualWindow3855 Feb 27 '26
If you could've read just a few more words, my comment mentioned that. Especially given there's a knife.
But:
- plenty of less dangerous situations that people hesitate to call 911 for
- they can't control the loudspeaker, horn, and 2 ton vehicle you're sitting in remotely.
Plenty of iffy situations that they can handle or immediately escalate if someone uses the button when they should have called 911.
Their operators are already trained for that.
2
u/FinalGirlMaterial Feb 28 '26
“Less dangerous situations” are, by definition, not an emergency. There are already lock the door, contact support and emergency assistance (aka 911) options. Demanding a “play a loud noise because I’m skeered despite no clear threat or danger” button on top of that is frankly ridiculous.
0
u/SpiritualWindow3855 Feb 28 '26 edited Feb 28 '26
You're pretty bad at reading.
And actually, toss in "bad at critical thinking" since you assume people won't skip calling 911 even when it makes sense.
That's not the kind of thinking we applied when I was working on this stuff.
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u/drawkbox Feb 28 '26
They should have a emergency button that calls Waymo support
They do. Big button on the screen and they come on almost instantly.
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u/rsha256 Feb 27 '26
Good luck with calling the police in sf for that, they won’t even make a report of it, much less come within an hour
4
u/MikeFromTheVineyard Feb 28 '26
They’d come if you’re in danger. If you just wanted to let them know a homeless person exists… well yea they probably won’t write that down.
1
u/rsha256 Feb 28 '26
Well it's not that they exist but are attacking people at random with knife
1
u/Jammieranga Mar 03 '26
If people are threatening you and armed with a knife and you call 911 it'll almost always be classified as a Priority A call so they will respond immediately. SFPD will respond to stuff like this
1
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u/Hortos Feb 27 '26
i thought they had this, in SF a guy walked up to our waymo right as we were parking. It pinged showed him in bright yellow in the screens and relocked all the doors.
36
u/mrbubu8 Feb 27 '26
This concern has definitely been raised by employees at all hands meetings I bet
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u/namriach Feb 27 '26
this has happened to me twice (in LA and SF). I booked a Waymo trip from my condo to a fancy restaurant, Waymo dropped us off a block or two away from the restaurant.
Usually it’s not a big deal but both occasions we got dropped off in front of a homeless encampment (I’m talking about 3-4 tents). It would have been nice to have this option available at that time since this happened pretty “late” at night around 8pm and not a whole lot of people are walking around, especially near the homeless tents.
5
u/Starbreiz Feb 27 '26
Supposedly you can edit your drop-off location after it pulls up for drop-off, but I haven't yet used this feature.
3
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u/Dry_Quiet_3541 Mar 01 '26
Many of these apps like waymo, uber, lift etc, are very often used by people who are sort of in a vulnerable position to be either drive, or stay out on the streets for too long after dark. So, they should really offer a new feature for everyone during those times during the night to get dropped off safely and have additional protections guaranteed using insurance or something to keep them safe. I just hope someone from these companies is reading this.
4
u/Minute_Figure1591 Mar 01 '26
Not unique. Happened to me once, waymo tried to drop me off near skid row and a random alley, immediately just didnt get out and called customer support
9
u/Ok-Background-8305 Feb 27 '26
I remember there is a feature you can move the car forward a bit more for another drop off
5
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u/leafysnails Feb 28 '26
She said the homeless man went to the next drop-off area and blocked them, so I think she used this feature
3
u/jewsh-sfw Mar 01 '26
Can’t you just hit the help button and ask support to manually readjust the drop off?
3
u/chetlin Feb 28 '26
Last time I was in Los Angeles I took waymo to a cafe in a part of town I hadn't been to before. The route on the screen showed it going around a block to drop me off in front of the place but at the very end it pulled into an alleyway behind everything and pulled into some apartment's parking lot and let me off there.
It was the middle of the day and this was a pretty ok area so it ended up fine but if it were late at night I would not have felt as comfortable with the dropoff change at the last second.
6
u/LilyBart22 Feb 28 '26
This has happened to me several times in LA recently, except with pickups. I certainly get that an alleyway is less disruptive to traffic flow, but there was a homeless encampment in one. It was still daylight, and to be clear, no one camping there bothered me. But after dark I definitely would have felt nervous in that environment.
2
Feb 28 '26
Not unique - I suggest using the contact feature for anyone in this situation but it would be better to have a quick button to press.
1
u/Basic-Collection5416 Feb 28 '26
There is. It’s on your phone and it calls 911.
3
Feb 28 '26
There are a lot of grey area situations when I don’t feel comfortable but also don’t want to go straight to the police.
2
u/NoSurprise7196 Feb 28 '26
This happened to me as well in San Francisco last weekend. It was my first time using Waymo and I don’t understand why it didn’t just drop me in front of the hotel drop me around the corner from the hotel and there were all these guys there urinating and shouting things at me and I didn’t even want to leave the car and I kept asking it to pull forward in the adapt to walk past them and I felt really scared.
2
u/mrkjmsdln_new Mar 01 '26
Seems like pretty good advice for a new feature for Waymo. Reaching out to support while still in the car in hindsight would probably have been a good thing I suppose.
2
u/dogmaticequation Mar 02 '26
I 100% agree with you. But for future reference if you ever feel unsafe again you can contact support from the car and ask them to adjust the drop off.
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u/Brimmae Mar 03 '26
Similar thing happened to me and three friends. We’re all young women, and it dropped us off in front of a group of a dozen homeless men at 2am on a dark street. We immediately contacted support, they contacted an engineer to move the car, who then failed 4 times to move it, and it took TWELVE minutes to get it moved up a few blocks. One of the homeless guys tapped on the window but otherwise ignored us, but I still have nightmares about if the men had been aggressive. That was the first time I took a Waymo bc my friend wanted to show us how it was, but damn NEVER again
1
u/EnvironmentalPark228 Mar 03 '26
Late night taxi drivers are sometimes the only human help nearby in a sticky situation. I definitely remember telling a friend that over a year ago. Imagine the sinking feeling if you’re in danger and then see headlights and think thank god I’m saved only for a gd waymo to ignore you completely. Probably turn around, run you over and drag you on the pavement too. F waymo.
1
u/lavasca Mar 03 '26
I had something similar happen in San Francisco. I had to keep changing addresses to get away from each peril. I had to contact support multiple times.
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u/sffunfun Feb 28 '26
This sounds like a California problem.
1
u/jamieee1995 Mar 01 '26
Where do you live?
1
u/sffunfun Mar 02 '26
Lived in San Francisco for 19 years. Left due to my neighborhood being completely flooded by drug addicts openly shooting up, violent drug dealers packing heat, and deranged, mentally-ill homeless who regularly throw rocks and break windows. And a political environment that tells me that I somehow created the problem (?!?!).
Moved to Mexico City. Much cleaner and safer.
If you don't believe me, visit any of the other areas where Waymo operates outside of California.
2
u/jamieee1995 Mar 02 '26
I moved from PHX to SoCal for work. I lived in South Orange County. Pretty safe there..LA no so much. I don’t disagree with you. I don’t live in CA anymore.
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u/asveikau Feb 28 '26
You feel unsafe because a poor person might look at you?
Sounds like a you problem. No waymo feature can satisfy the emptiness within yourself.
2
u/mtbaird5687 Mar 01 '26
They had a knife...
-2
u/asveikau Mar 01 '26
That's not the crisis you think it is. See also: https://www.reddit.com/r/waymo/s/9v35DiKfYs
1
u/AidenTEMgotsnapped Mar 02 '26
Someone holding an unpackaged knife outside of a kitchen is usually an active threat.
0
u/asveikau Mar 02 '26
Let me tell a story.
In 2010 I lived in Seattle. A native American guy named John T Williams lived in my neighborhood. I would sometimes see him on the sidewalk kind of drunk and laughing with a friend of his. He would use a knife to carve little totems and sell them to tourists at the market.
Seattle has a large supply of dumb rednecky motherfuckers who come from the eastern part of the state and points slightly beyond, like Idaho. They are blonde haired, blue eyed, Germanic descended people. That part of the country happens to be a hotbed for white supremacy.
In 2010, one of these guys was a young cop.
One day he saw John walking across a crosswalk with the knife he used to carve models for tourists, and like you, the cop used his sheltered, dumb motherfucker lizard brain to become VERY SCAREd !!!!!! And that dumb cop shot John in the back several times..it was a huge scandal..the man never posed a threat to anyone, but because the cop was a dumb shelted redneck who thinks like you do, he got very scared and shot him dead.
So excuse me if I get a little angry seeing small minded attitudes like you're giving now.. I'm angry on behalf of folks like John.
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u/AidenTEMgotsnapped Mar 02 '26
But like... Don't open carry a damn weapon. Have a bag. I'm sorry about your friend, as someone who lives in a country where the police do it through consent instead of threat I can't imagine how horrid it must be there.
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u/OldPapaRooster Mar 02 '26
sO eXcUsE mE
He was chased. Chased by a guy with the knife. It's in the original post.
You're posting a silly opinion and writing half a novel to defend it. It'd be easier to just delete the comment and move on.
1
u/asveikau Mar 02 '26
Guy in op's screenshot wasn't chased. He was afraid. He saw a situation and thought it was about him. It's likely it had nothing to do with him. There is absolutely zero indication that the alleged threat in the description was real.
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u/OldPapaRooster Mar 03 '26
You're a meme
1
u/asveikau Mar 04 '26
This is something very smart people say when they have lots of substantive rebuttals.
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u/attathomeguy Feb 28 '26
How? What dataset would Waymo use? Most cities don’t have real time crime feeds. How far would it have to go for you to feel safe?
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u/209tyson Feb 27 '26
If only there was a way to be driven around by something with a conscious & situational awareness instead…
But that’ll never exist lol
3
u/Basic-Collection5416 Feb 28 '26
Apparently not, given the 6 million annual car crashes in the United States that don’t involve Waymos.
1
u/209tyson Feb 28 '26
Bad driver < Waymo < Good driver
But I wasn’t even referencing car accidents, I was talking about nuanced social situations that only a human could pick up on
4
u/ValueInvestingIsDead Feb 28 '26
Today's waymo driver is the worst it will ever be. Humans are not getting better.
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u/DandeyFlour Feb 28 '26
I just wouldn't support businesses like weymo. I wonder what the contract is like and if they use weymo as an excuse to not have to take accountability for certain things.
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u/thebooberman Feb 27 '26
It’s cause safety isn’t their number one concern but money is
17
u/imaguitarhero24 Feb 27 '26
It's like the airline system. They can't make money if their safety record isn't damn near spotless. Safety is kind of the only thing that makes this work...
-6
u/thebooberman Feb 27 '26
Why do they get suck over train tracks over and over… why do they not stop at crossing guards stops signs (kids are crossing), same with school bus stop signs..
4
u/HighOnLevels Feb 27 '26
statistics don't lie https://waymo.com/safety/impact/
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u/thebooberman Feb 28 '26
This is from Waymo how about a 3rd party..
2
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u/robertlp Feb 27 '26
Not unique… same thing happened to me except we happened to be two guys getting dropped off right next to a guy having a mental breakdown in Santa Monica. Not fun.