Waymo Drives Off with South Bay Man's Luggage

CaliforniaKarl

I am surprised the trunk didn't open, and I’m very surprised that Waymo support could not turn the vehicle around. I’ve had a Waymo alert me when I left something in the back seat; I’m surprised it did not do the same for the trunk. I think the person should report this to either the California DMV or CPUC, as well as the local airport authority. For autonomous vehicles, I think people need to ‘normalize’ leaving one of the doors open until all people & cargo are out of the vehicle. The vehicle may complain, but it’s not going to drive off.

justinclift

(The sfist.com site seems to be extremely slow atm) https://web.archive.org/web/20260502234729/https://sfist.com...

cheriot

Thank you, Sunnyvale man, for hitting this edge case before I do.

est31

This is a general fear for me whenever I take a taxi or something like it: i always remind the driver of my luggage in the back when we arrive and ask them whether they can help me get it.

userbinator

take two complementary rides to pick it up That seems... reasonable? They're not saying "come at your own expense" but giving him a ride there and back.

bastawhiz

This past week I took a Waymo and had difficulty exiting. It seemed like someone may have enabled the child locks. I'm overall very positive on the service, but this kind of issue needs to be addressed by the company.

geor9e

You can prevent this by leaving the passenger door open until you've gotten the trunk open.

krupan

The way this has apparently been handled saddens me. I worked for Cruise, a Waymo competitor. A Cruise vehicle famously had a very unfortunate accident and Cruise government relations employees famously tried to cover up the worst details when reporting it to the CA DMV. Of course the cover-up was discovered and guess what? Cruise lost their license and not long after lost all their funding and shut down. Self driving cars are a new technology that makes a lot of people nervous. For it to succeed those nerves need to be acknowledged and settled. This is life and death for the business and technology! Also, Waymo's customers (and really all of us sharing the road with them) are very much providing Waymo a huge service as early beta testers. They need to be treated extremely well right now. It is not the time for Waymo to be trying to keep things quiet, dismissing concerns, and making half assed restitution for problems. Again, This is life and death for the technology and your company, Waymo! Every bit as important as the engineering work you are doing. Please don't screw this up

plaidfuji

They offered him two free hour-long rides to their facility and back just to pick up the suitcase? Waymo trouble than it’s worth

chaboud

Fearful that a simple software issue could do exactly this, I have adopted an approach to using Waymo with luggage: 1. Get out. 2. Leave the door open. 3. Open the trunk. 4. Get stuff. 5. Close the trunk. 6. Close the door that I left open. I've had enough stupid stuff happen in a Waymo. I'm not going to leave it to faith that it won't drive off with my laptop, etc.

bryan_w

Not keeping the door open while grabbing luggage is NPC behavior no matter if it's waymo, Uber or a taxi. The fact he mad this mistake, then went to the news media to broadcast his bad decision making is embarrassing. I bet he finds himself the victim of bad situations all the time and doesn't know why