Robotaxi passengers are sleeping, causing 911 calls

Waking up in Waymo comes as a shock.

Ditto Cassander remembers soft music flowing from the robotaxi’s speakers as he was coming home late at night from a friend’s birthday party last year. The next moment, Los Angeles firefighters were opening the door and asking if he was OK.

His 6-minute journey had ended about an hour ago. A remote Wemo assistant, dialing in through the car’s speaker, repeatedly tried to wake him up and eventually called 911 when he did not wake up.

“I was like, ‘Oh my God, what happened?’ “said Kasander, a 30-year-old interior designer.

Cassander’s RoboCab nap, unfortunately, was not an isolated incident.

As Alphabet Inc. And Tesla Inc. As companies bring self-driving taxis to more cities, it’s becoming harder to ignore the messy aspects of serving unpredictable humans. Passengers are sleeping, spilling drinks, spilling food, vomiting, experiencing medical emergencies and, in at least two cases, giving birth in cars. They stumble out of vehicles and forget to lock the doors, forcing operators to pay nearby gig workers to do it.

A driverless Tesla robotaxi weaves through traffic in Austin, Texas. (Eric Gay/AP)

These seemingly small problems are draining municipal resources and complicating the implementation of the robotaxi service.

So many robotaxi customers have nodded off mid-ride that Austin police and firefighters even have a name for the phenomenon: “sleepers.” The Texas capital recorded 99 such calls in the first nine months of Waymo’s service, said Roger Patterson, commander of Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services.

If a tired or exhausted passenger falls asleep in a traditional taxi or rideshare, the driver may yell or wake them up. This is not the case with robotaxi. Remote assistants monitoring the cars try to talk through speakers and check on passengers from interior cameras. But if they don’t get a response, company protocol often requires them to call 911. And first responders have to assume the worst.

If the remote assistant can’t tell whether the passenger is breathing, Austin dispatchers consider an incident a possible heart attack, Patterson said. Ultimately, he said, only 3% of such calls require the passenger to be transported to a hospital. But events tie up personnel who may be needed elsewhere.

“We don’t want to spend a large number of resources on these calls when, statistically, we know that most of the time, these people do not need further medical treatment,” Patterson said at an Austin City Council meeting in April. “These calls are very resource-intensive.”

For the cities involved, robotaxis could create other problems that require human response. In San Francisco, more than 60 WayMos had to be taken off the road after widespread blackouts in December brought cars to a standstill on city streets, in some cases blocking first responders.

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Last week, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration sent a letter to autonomous driving companies saying that some cars are driving through emergency scenes, ignoring flares and traffic cones and obstructing ambulances. It urged the companies to find solutions and said the administration would hold meetings with them to ensure the problems are resolved.

“When someone else is there to take responsibility, it takes away a lot of the incentives for the company to do something,” said Bryant Walker Smith, an associate law professor at the University of South Carolina and an expert on automated vehicle technology. “Local governments are massively subsidizing the research and development and operation of automated driving.”

Tom DeWiggins, the fire chief of a Phoenix suburb served by Waymo, said companies need to standardize their procedures so first responders don’t have to guess how to stabilize vehicles, open car doors and contact remote paramedics in an emergency.

“We would love to see a standard approach across the board,” said Diwiggins of the Chandler, Ariz., fire department. “If you expect to see research from a firefighter in a 4-minute response, trying to figure out what vehicle it is, what type of platform it is on, what company it is – that’s not going to happen.”

Robotaxi companies do not publicly release statistics on customers sleeping in public or emergencies mid-ride, making it difficult to estimate the scale of such problems. Most host cities are also in no rush to discuss them publicly. Officials in San Francisco, ground zero for testing and deployment of the technology, did not disclose numbers despite repeated requests from Bloomberg, though Austin officials said at a public meeting that San Francisco could see 250 such incidents in 2025.

However, the introduction of autonomous taxis can sometimes seem like a huge social experiment, testing technology and people.

Zoox is one of those companies that has incentives to stop passengers from wrecking their vehicles. (zoox)

Alphabet’s Waymo, Amazon.com Inc. Zoox and Tesla have had to create incentives to prevent passengers from wrecking cars that lack an alert human driver. For example, Tesla charges users $50 for moderate messes like food spills or excessive dirt. Quitting smoking or biowaste costs $150.

Waymo, meanwhile, encourages users to report their own spills, charging a $50 cleanup fee that increases to $100 if the next passenger discovers the mess first. According to the company’s help page, repeat violators — including trash and smoking violations — will be charged more.

“Life happens, which is why we have robust systems and trained professionals ready to support our riders and fleet,” a Waymo spokesperson said. “Because Waymo is a shared space, we ask riders to treat vehicles with respect and let us know if a car needs more attention so it stays clean and pristine for the next person.”

The absence of a driver may make passengers think that they can do whatever they want without anyone monitoring them. But cars have internal cameras. For example, Waymo’s remote team of support staff can access that footage to perform cleanliness checks or detect unusual activity or rule violations.

And someone will always find something wrong. The Vemos – all of which are electric – return to their depots when they need charging, giving workers the chance to clean the cars. A former contractor told Bloomberg News that if they had to deal with any type of biothreat, they were paid extra for shifts. A recent job listing for an autonomous vehicle cleaner posted by Move, Waymo’s fleet partner in Miami, included “responding to biohazard incidents (vomit, blood, spills) in accordance with OSHA bloodborne pathogen protocols” as one of the job responsibilities. “Full PPE and training is provided,” the posting reads.

Social media shows that many travelers are willing to travel with some level of filth, even if it upsets them. They often post snapshots of litter, including beer cans, spilled fries, a half-eaten bowl — even cracked eggs.

Sara Vasile, who frequently rides Waymo in Los Angeles, has found trash and alcohol left inside some vehicles. Her roommate recently took a ride, during which the buzzballs rolled out from under the seat. Still, Wasil considers robotaxis to be cleaner than most human-driven cabs or rideshares.

Last year, Vasile realized that he had stepped in dog feces just before the Waymo arrived. He pressed the call button on the car’s rear screen to report the problem to the Waymo remote assistant, who thanked him and told him the car would return to its depot after his trip was complete. He was not charged for the cleaning.

“It makes me feel good to know that they won’t send the car to someone else,” he said.

However, stopping or cleaning up the mess pales in comparison to the problems caused by medical emergencies along the way.

According to written testimony the company gave to Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.) in February, Waymo has a team of specialized, US-based agents dedicated to coordinating with first responders during incidents. Riders who experience a medical emergency can contact 911 directly or contact Waymo’s remote support staff via in-car tablet. According to a company spokesperson, Zoox passengers can press the “emergency call” button located above them, on the screen, or on their app to connect with a support representative, who will contact first responders as needed.

In December, a passenger gave birth in the back seat of a Waymo on her way to a hospital in San Francisco. According to NBC News, the remote assistant called in to check on the rider and contacted 911 after detecting “unusual activity” in the vehicle. This is at least the second Waymo delivery, following a similar situation in Phoenix.

David Margins, director of product management at Waymo, said the vehicles could provide a safer solution in an emergency than traditional taxis or rideshares, whose drivers may not know how to respond.

For his part, Cassander said his sudden nap reaction made him even more likely to use Waymo, which he drives about four or five times a week. It didn’t hurt that even with the extra time, the experience ultimately cost them no more than the original $8 fare.

“It feels kind of safe,” Cassander said. “With humans you don’t know what’s going to happen, but with Waymo you do.”