DoorDashers are getting paid to close Waymo's self-driving car doors
https://www.engadget.com/transportation/doordashers-are-getting-paid-to-close-waymos-self-driving-car-doors-122711640.html?src=rssOpen linkView original on piefed.zip439
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Putting aside all the late stage capitalism going on here, I still can't get over the fact that Alphabet (Google) spent billions of dollars developing self driving car technology only to arrive at, "Oh shit. Someone left the car door open. What do we do now?"
Giving them the ability to close their own doors just screams "kid's arm smashed in automatic car door failure".
I used to have a Tesla (traded it in). In the app you could open, but not close, the windows. It could be inconvenient at times but I assume the reasoning was similar.
That’s weird. Most of the cars I have had can open and close the windows from the fob. (Usually double press then hold unlock or lock, though one car I had [Accord] required the key in the door for the windows to go up.)
Right - I think the difference is that, when using a fob, you're likely within line of sight or at least nearby your car and so presumably could observe or otherwise check for car occupants, but so long as your car and phone both have reception you can use the app from anywhere without any clue who might be in or around the car.
New cars have automatic window up functions but strictly dont apply enough pressure to choke a child
Mine goes up automatically and if it encounters resistance, it goes back down again. I guess this is too hard for Tesla.
Still hurts like hell though... from someone who once accidentally rolled up the window BEFORE pulling my head in. :-D
IIRC people were testing cybertrucks for some auto-closing functionality, and if they encountered resistance, they would back off... Then try harder, slicing through hotdogs
I saw carrots being sheared like nothing from the cybertruck.
Behold the miracle of the slipping clutch, millenials. See It working without being digital and all without an app by the ancient secrets of mechanics!
Just make the motor not slam the door but close it slowly with not enough force to harm someone and put like two sensors + 1 backup in there
Call me a cynical luddite but somehow I don't trust today's autonomous car technology to be reliable and fool-proof enough for that mechanism not to fail catastrophically and randomly because it's raining or someone on the other side of the street made a sudden movement or Mercury is in retrograde or the company's stock market just dropped 592 points because investors are furious after realising they wasted money on a backup or it's Tuesday.
You know we already have autonomous doors for houses. I feel like theres a lot more trust involved having a 2 ton vehicle move significant speeds on the road than having it close a door
I do not know that. I'd also assume the technology to close a door on a car to work very differently from that on a house because a door on a house that may not be closed properly is far less dangerous than one on a car. Also, yes, I don't trust that 2 ton vehicle either if it claims to be autonomous.
Perfect argument that they are too immature to be on the road.
I'm sorry, are you saying children are too immature to be passengers in cars?
I don't get what you are saying. My kids' door locks aren't even on. You know what they can manage? Closing the door.
You said
In response to a comment saying doors may not automatically close on self driving cars to protect children. It seems like you're saying children are too immature to be on the road.
No one thinks children are incapable of closing doors, people think self closing doors may cut off children's fingers.
That isn't how the reply came off.
And that line of inquiry is irrelevant. If safe, self closing doors are a mechanical marvel that stumps the engineering teams of the self-driving car engineers then they fundamentally aren't up to the job.
This is a very small bar compared to giant leaps needed to have cars be autonomous.
That's silly. This is already a ubiquitous feature in minivans.
But they built in a saw blade killswitch if a finger is detected a good decade ago or more. Surely they can apply such technology to cars.
The sawstop causes mechanical damage that must be repaired if activated. It's more like an airbag than an e-stop.
It hasn't yet been used without people around who can stop the process if it goes wrong.
And yet things like robovaccums have. The sawblade has to detect the right material. Meanwhile Robot vaccums just have to detect anything in its path to then stop. And it has a bumper. And ring cameras can detect motion. As well as dashboard cameras. Dont see why any of this technology cannot be used in car doors just to detect anything in it’s path.
I'm not saying it's forever impossible, I'm saying I currently don't trust these technologies to operate autonomously in a context where lives are at potential risk and they'll need to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that they can do so reliably before I start trusting.
This shows you just how strong our culture is an influence here. You can leave a door open and cause enough trouble that they need to hire someone else to go manually shut it. I’m willing to bet there are a lot of seemingly innocuous ways to cause friction with these companies. The more people know and exploit them, the better.
Supposedly a salt circle drawn like "no entry" road markings can trap them.
And, as a bonus, any ghosts or demons therein!
That was the coning of waymo cars. It was their version of a salt circle.
At first I think you were jokingly referring to them as demons. Now I realize you’re actually serious…
Well, daemons, but still...
Supposedly putting a cheapo luggage lock on a door latch requires a coordinated effort involving a locksmith or a tow truck
the revolution IS YOU
Even if this thing was left on a single city block for 8 hours with its door open, the data it collects about nearby cars, Bluetooth devices, phones, WiFi SSIDs, recorded video/audio, etc. makes it worth it for alphabet, I imagine.
When I was a kid my dad would drive forward and slam the brakes to close our van door.
It was really fun until that became the only way that closed the door.
Clearly that's why it's called DoorDash. /s
Take my upvote and gtfo 😂
Does it charge extra to the last person that used the Waymo to cover the cost? Because if not, might as well just leave the door open every time, now you're a job creator.
Just keep the door and you're creating even more jobs in the door factory.
They have self-driving cars, but self-closing doors is still at least 10-15 years away.
Only because you can't outsource door closing to the Philippines
I imagine there would be a gigantic list of safety concerns for self-closing doors.
They already exist though? There are a bunch of EVs with servos in their doors. You can still overpower it just like you can an auto closing trunk
edit: and they can also have proximity sensors, i know cadillac does that and their implementation is hyper vigilant, will stop the front door even if you're next to the pillar
Eh, we already have self closing trunks. As long as they are programmed correctly (not by Tesla) they sense resistance and stop.
I don't think programming is a problem, auto closing trunks and doors aren't strong enough. You can test that on any self closing trunk door, it will sound and feel awful but they're not strong at all.
They absolutely are strong enough to break fingers. The Tesla dumpster is famous for cutting into fingers with the self closing trunk
Tesla isn't a good example of how anything is done in the industry, but rather of how not to do it.
I don't doubt Tesla's doors are designed to mutilate their customers, much like they're designed to trap them inside in the event of a fire, probably because Musk's ketamine addled brain though it'd be funny, but that's not how any other company would do it, even if only because because lawsuits cost money and weaker locks are cheaper.
I've seen cars with self-closing doors though. Also I'm not sure where the safety consideration would come in since we have self closing building doors right now and no one seems to get cut in half by those.
Nothing a slipping clutch won't fix. There already are self-closing doors everywhere. Maybe not in cars but in all sorts of vehicles and everywhere in buildings.
Minivans have had self-closing doors for decades bro
You're right! Tech companies need to stick to the easier problem to solve, self-driving cars! 😆
Hmmm…so it costs Waymo $11.25 if you “forget” to shut the door.
Maybe people will become very forgetful.
Or, upon reflection, just don’t use Waymo, and don’t play into it at all.
If you leave it all the way open, the car just needs to drive a couple feet with decent acceleration to close it.
If you ALMOST close it, but not all the way, that would require some sort of intervention.
Nah, you just speed up then slam on the brakes to open it, then you can close it as you said.
The door can latch but not be completely closed.
Well then you can drive just fine like that.
But the sensor says the door is still open, so the computer won't.
Need a car to get to the airport, because my city doesn't have mass transit.
If the only cars in my area are Waymos, do I just skip my flight?
"Don't use X" always means "it's okay to use X if there are no alternatives but do look for alternatives". Unless X is X. Then don't use X.
Well, in that case maybe you just forget to shut the door ;)
The cost of doing business is to pay a poor to close a door and keep the wheels of progress spinning.
so from now on leave all waymo's doors open and if you see one open no you don't
Don't forget to fart as deep into the chair cushions as possible as well
No this is more like that old legend about the French colonial forces trying to solve the local rat problem in a Vietnamese city by paying the local populations 1 franc per rat that they kill and turn in. It made the locals breed rats to kill and turn them in for the bounty.
We need to recognize that we are now "the local population" in that scenario. We need to milk the billionaire class dry at every turn and throw as many profit losses into their game as they yield any surface area to attack. It must be attacked.
Flip their '1 dollar game for them' into '2 dollar game for you' every chance you can.
Give people a dollar discount off their ride if they close the door on the way out.
But charge an extra dollar first
have a friend stalk Waymo’s and give the passenger $5 to leave the door ajar a bit .
Why are people leaving the doors open in the first place that's just wild. The super excited to get to work or something I don't get it.
Wouldn't the simplest solution be to just ban people who leave the doors open, it's not that hard to close them.
Probably the doors are in the "unlatched" position rather than wide open.
Maybe some people simply expect an autonomous vehicle to be able to autonomously close its doors in the safest possible way without assistance. Maybe they actually think they're doing it right by not forcing the doors?
Human driven taxis have mechanically closing passenger doors for decades. It's a big bug software and a management a failure . This can't be street legal. Autonomous cabs are billionaires snake oil
Hell, the Mexican colectivo van driver closes the sliding doors on his rattly 20 year old van simply by hard braking.
Why can't they build a mechanism where the car can close its own doors. I thought that would be the smaller part compared to autonomous self driving
The gig worker is the mechanism. Very innovative tech.
I know I can shut a passenger side car door with just the accelerator and brakes. If it's not latched completely then a bollard or a curbside tree will suffice.
see? ai does create new jobs. checkmate ai doomers /s
is there no saving this timeline?
The future is clocking in for another 12 hour shift at the "making minor adjustments to the super intelligent AI dick sucking factory" so you can afford to eat the bugs and live in the pod
New rule, if you order one - fail to close the doors properly.
Door dashers certainly will be doing this
Instead of take-a-penny leave-a-penny, close-a-door open-a-door
Its funny because in the US, there are regulations that make it such that, even if they have the capability to close the doors remotely and anti pinch sensors etc, they are not allowed to unless it is done by someone from a device nearby while they hold down the close button.
Oooooo interesting! Is ilthe reasoning the possible accidents?
The reasoning is because of incompetent government
Top notch, very latest, highest technology, aren't they?
LMAO!!
Just accelerate at full power and the doors will close themselves, duh.
Move fast and break things!
Or reverse slightly and stop…
So what's the point if a future car can't close itself?
The US has serious FUD w regards to self driving vehicles and legal issues are in the way. Obviously the car could be built to do this safely but there are laws that prohibit this. Remember this is the same country that has reintroduced measles to the masses out of uneducated fear of vaccines.
Of course it is.
Can't the car just back up half a meter then quickly go forward half a meter?
Now I'm imagining the car shaking off like a wet dog to shut its doors.
...in order to kill a few more people than they already do?
Elon's robots can close the doors.
And lock them, then self immolate
Humans are dumb. I mean humans can do awesome super intelligent things, but the average human is a dumb piece of shit.
Humans know how to close a car door.
This, along with the story of the driverless car running over a beloved neighborhood cat, highlight the fundamental problem here: they’re training these systems to be autonomous cars - and they’re impressively close - but they’re still miles away from creating a simulation of an autonomous human. Not everything about operating a car is driving it.
Obviously they don't.
but they don't give a fuck and just walk away.
Or they're in a hurry and didn't realize the door was ajar when they left the vehicle.
Pretty normal for this to happen at the airport, especially when you're carrying a bunch of bags, juggling kids, etc. Normally, its not a big deal, because the cabbie will pop out and close the door if they get the alert. But here, there's no remote way to close the door and no way to signal the rider that it didn't close completely.
I didn't imply the human didn't know how to close a car door. I am saying the human is dumb for specifically choosing to be a piece of shit for NOT closing the car door.
I'm speaking strictly on the nefarious side of things because I can't understand simply "forgetting" to close a car door... but that again circles back to the dumb part of the human brain.
Yeah, the humans are the problem here and not the unregulated, self-autonomous robo taxi.
Just autonomous...the "self" is included in the definition of autonomous already.
👍
Depending on what I'm doing, I periodically have to double back and re-close a door if I didn't close it hard enough. Modern cars have built in alarms specifically to alert drivers when a door latch isn't secured. You don't have to be a piece of shit to fail to notice that a door is ajar.
In "choosing to be a piece of shit" they put $11.25 in a door dasher's pocket. That's probably enough for like one taco in San Francisco, but still.. They gave a dasher a taco.