Waymo, the taxi app with self-driving robotaxis, explained what happens if someone tries to steal one of its fully autonomous, electric Jaguars – following an incident Thursday in downtown Los Angeles.
A man, who authorities said may have been under the influence, was sitting in the driver’s seat of one of Waymo’s all-electric Jaguar I-PACEs when officers arrived on the scene near South Hill Street and Fifth Street around 12:30 p.m., according to the Los Angeles Times. Angeles Police Department. Footage shows officers pulling him out of the driver’s seat, where no one normally sits in the self-driving cars.
Waymo officially launched in Los Angeles in November, it will become available to everyone in some parts of the greater LA metro area, including Santa Monica, Hollywood and areas of South LA around the University of Southern California campus. Before then, the app was only available to a limited number of riders on a waiting list.
Like apps like Uber and Lyft, rides are offered through the app seven days a week, 24 hours a day – only without anyone behind the wheel. The service is currently available in LA, San Francisco, Phoenix and some surrounding areas of the Arizona city.
Of Waymo’s more than five million rides, there have been “only a handful of instances” in which a rider or someone else not authorized to drive the car has attempted to drive away, the company said in a statement to CBS News on Thursday Los Angeles. .
“Waymo vehicles are designed so that unauthorized individuals cannot disable the automated driving system and manually operate the vehicles,” Waymo said in the statement. “When an unauthorized person is in the driver’s seat, Waymo’s Rider Support team can ask them to exit the vehicle and end the ride. If they do not comply with commands to exit the vehicle, Rider Support coordinates with our Emergency Response Team , which is working with the police to respond.”
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Riders are not allowed to drive the cars, which are fully autonomous, and only occasionally do Waymo employees sit in the driver’s seat. The company said these individuals are specialists who assess the performance of the vehicles and technology.
“Our vehicles operate primarily autonomously, but you will sometimes notice that our cars have autonomous specialists behind the wheel,” according to the company’s website. “These specialists are there to monitor our autonomous driving technology and share important feedback to help us improve the Waymo One experience.”
Waymo is not authorized to offer rides on freeways, but is fully available on public roads in some parts of LA.
The electric Jaguars are controlled by a system the company calls “the Waymo driver,” which includes hardware and software for self-driving capabilities. This includes sensors, cameras, radars and an AI platform on the hardware side, as well as collecting information from sensors on the software side, according to the company’s website.
“Together, our hardware and software work together to paint a complete picture of the world around the car and allow us to navigate roads safely,” the website says.
Cameras in the vehicles are used to determine when a rider may be under the influence of alcohol, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, which reported last week on how Waymo handles such situations. The cars’ cameras, which use a machine learning model based on real-time cases, can also tell if a person in the car is smoking or not wearing their seat belt, the Chronicle reported.
Earlier this year, when Waymo was only available to LA drivers on a select waiting list, a man was arrested on suspicion of attempting to steal one of its self-driving vehicles in downtown LA. He had tried to put the car in drive but was unable to manipulate the controls, the LAPD said.
