[nemothekid]

The way this is being reported gives the impression that there are workers in the philippines remotely driving these cars (if they are, maybe google found a good use case for all that Stadia tech).

What it actually is, if the car gets stuck someone can manually override - which, I imagine is normal? If the car gets stuck you can call someone and they can do "something", which can probably nudge the car into action. I doubt the latency is that good where someone can remotely drive the car.

[bink]

What I found interesting about this is that on several occasions I've seen Waymos get confused and block intersections (and once Muni tracks). Each time they've sat there for at least 10-15 mins until a police officer showed up and tapped on the window. Then it was another 10-15 mins before the vehicle started to move again. What are these agents doing?

[walkersnice]

The police officers operate autonomously 99% of the time, but 1% fall back to a remote worker in the Philippines, sometimes the same agent.

Scheduling overheads account for some of the latency.

This is all compounded with anything vaguely legal, at which point decisions are escalated to legal support.

This has led to a drop in legal disputes, keeps legal costs low, and keeps the courts clear.

Surge pricing in SF applies during periods of low agent availability, such as public holidays in the Philippines, or public discontent in other regions of the world.

Sorry about the intersection though.