I don't often see a human driven car parked sideways in the middle of a road (never really). If a human was in that Waymo, they would have moved quickly. I'm an huge fan of Waymo and autonomous vehicles. They save lives. However the fact that Waymo's don't have the sense to move out of the way is a major problem and on that they don't seem to be on track to solve. Incidents like this will delay the adoption of autonomous vehicles and that will cost lives.
bryanlarsen|1 hour ago
Some humans would have exactly the same response as the Waymo. When a human brain gets completely overwhelmed and doesn't know what to do, it drops down into animal behavior -- freeze or flee.
Given that it's a dangerous multi-ton machine, a Waymo likely has a programmed default behavior of "do nothing & phone home for instructions".
Which isn't an excuse -- an emergency vehicle is not an uncommon situation and Waymo should know what to do before being allowed on public roads.
A failure to get remedy instructions in a timely fashion from a human is even more alarming. Google is famous for automating tasks that should be performed by a human.