Police learn to handle Waymo, Uber buys another company and Waymo runs a red light. LegalRideshare breaks it down.
POLICE STOP A WAYMO
How do police handle a Waymo? NBC Miami reported:
Waymo’s fleet of autonomous vehicles is expanding across South Florida. But for these robotaxis, passengers aren’t the only priority.
The company is also preparing for the people who may have to deal with these vehicles in an emergency: police officers, firefighters, and paramedics.
Waymo says it has trained more than 40,000 first responders, including personnel from 14 agencies in South Florida.
The company argues its vehicles are making roads safer, in part by eliminating many of the human behaviors that contribute to crashes.
“These vehicles don’t get intoxicated and drive. These vehicles don’t get drowsy,” Patrick said. “These vehicles don’t look at their phone when they should be looking at the roadway.”
NBC6 Investigates reviewed National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data and found there have been 55 reported crashes in Florida since 2021 involving vehicles operating in fully autonomous mode at the time of the crash.
UBER ACQUIRES EZCATER
Uber gobbles up another company. Bloomberg reported:
Uber Technologies Inc. is buying catering firm ezCater Inc. for $2.3 billion in a cash deal that will help the Uber Eats delivery platform reach a more corporate clientele.
Boston-based ezCater offers a platform where businesses can arrange for food services at events, meetings and other gatherings. The privately held company generated over $2.5 billion in gross bookings over the trailing 12 months and works with more than 140,000 restaurants nationwide, Uber said in a statement Tuesday. On average, ezCater’s customers spend more than $400 per order.
The acquisition will help better position Uber against rival DoorDash Inc., the leading food-delivery platform in the US. DoorDash launched a workplace catering product in April.
WAYMO RUNS A RED LIGHT
A Waymo in Florida runs a red light. Bloomberg reported:
A viral video posted to Threads is raising new questions about self-driving vehicles in Central Florida after it appeared to show a Waymo van moving into an Orlando intersection while the traffic light was red.
The video, posted Sunday by user @melisaunfiltered, had more than 670,000 views, 10,000 likes and hundreds of comments on Monday evening. It shows a Waymo self-driving van inching through the intersection of Kirkman Road and Carrier Drive at a red light. The vehicle then continues through the intersection, despite cross traffic — and then it changes lanes mid-intersection as the light turns green.
The video is not the only recent post drawing attention to Waymo vehicles in the area. Another social media user shared a photo of what appeared to be the same Waymo van with the same license plate number stopped at a green light on Sand Lake Road days earlier, refusing to move.
Video from a different user also appeared to show a similar Waymo van running a red light across Kirkman Road at the same intersection last week.
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FULL TRANSCRIPT:
[00:38] Jared Hoffa:
Ladies and gentlemen, drivers, gig workers, and everyone in between, welcome to This Week in Rideshare podcast. I'm your host, Jared Hoffa. It is Thursday, October 8th, and this week: police learn to work with Waymo, Uber buys another company, and Waymo runs a red light. LegalRideshare breaks it down.
(Theme Music)
[01:05] Jared Hoffa:
And from LegalRideshare, I'm joined by the co-founder and lead attorney, Bryant Greening. Bryant, happy Thursday!
[01:13] Bryant Greening:
Happy Thursday, Jared. Great to be back for yet another—I was waiting for you to throw in "for yet another episode of This Week in Rideshare." I'm now learning your words. You made fun of me last week, so I stopped saying it.
[01:24] Jared Hoffa:
I saw that! I see you cut that off. That's hilarious.
[01:28] Bryant Greening:
So I cut it off, and I've decided that I'm going to change things up a little bit, not creatively.
[01:34] Jared Hoffa:
I love it. That's great. Keep it simple. Yeah, so we're doing it a little early this week. And I have some really interesting topics, a lot on Waymo. And I definitely want to get your thoughts on this because it's stuff we have discussed.
And so we're going to jump into the first story, which I thought was interesting because we did discuss this, I think about a week or two ago: you know, how do police handle a Waymo? And this is an article from NBC Miami, and they reported, quote:
"Waymo's fleet of autonomous vehicles is expanding across South Florida. But for these robotaxis, passengers aren't the only priority. The company is preparing for people who may have to deal with these vehicles in an emergency. So that includes police officers, firefighters, and paramedics. Waymo says it has trained more than 40,000 first responders, including personnel from 14 agencies in South Florida. The company argues its vehicles are making roads safer in part by eliminating many of the human behaviors that contribute to crashes. NBC 6 Investigates reviewed the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data and found that there had been 55 reported crashes in Florida since 2021 involving vehicles operating in fully autonomous mode at the time of the crash."
So, Bryant, we had talked about this—that they need to start training these first responders. It looks like in Florida they are. And surprisingly, Waymo's saying they've done it with 40,000 first responders already, which is news to me.
[03:04] Bryant Greening:
Yeah, I think this is great news. And I'm actually glad that Waymo and hopefully the other autonomous vehicle companies are providing this sort of training, because this is a totally new realm of technology. First responders need to know how to appropriately deal with these vehicles, how to pull them over, how to get information that they need from them.
I can imagine all sorts of situations where it would be necessary to stop these cars: if somebody's having a medical emergency in the car, if the car causes a crash or a dangerous situation, or even if there's a first responder that's trying to get through, say, an intersection and the autonomous vehicle is blocking the way.
So to have first responders trained is going to make these interactions with the Waymos go much smoother, hopefully solve any issues that they do have with these vehicles. And also, I'm seeing this as a way to have accountability when these cars make mistakes, and we have already seen that they do. There needs to be repercussions.
And Waymo's not going to care if they get a $200 speeding ticket. But what this does—if a cop can pull over a car that's not acting appropriately or not acting legally—it creates a record that there was an issue. It creates some sort of paper trail that a Waymo vehicle was involved in an event, and that gives information to the company, it gives information to law enforcement, it gives information to legislators so that we can then take necessary action to ensure that whatever issue there was—whether the car was speeding or operating recklessly or blocking an intersection when a police car was trying to get through—we can then take action to correct those issues.
And cops can be one of the first lines of defense when it comes to making our communities ready for these cars to be integrated into them.
[04:59] Jared Hoffa:
Yeah, I'm really happy to see that this has happened. And I do think it was a pretty quick response from Waymo after there was the articles about first responders not knowing how to deal with this, and them stopping issues, or when there's another crash in the road, Waymo's kind of getting in the middle of it. So hats off to Waymo. They actually did step up and not say, "Hey, it's not us," which is typical of other companies.
And like you said, it's not really about the speeding ticket; they don't really care about that. But the accountability, the paper trail, and also just educating people on how to deal with these is a huge deal. And so, I mean, 40,000 first responders already is really great.
The fact that there's been 55 reported crashes was also news to me. So that's saying that there's a lot more of these crashes on the road than I was aware of. And I don't know if you were aware of that either, but it's showing that there's still a lot of things that are going wrong with these Waymos, even at the small scale they're in.
[05:58] Bryant Greening:
Yeah, they're fallible. I mean, that's what we're learning, and no technology is perfect. And hopefully this allows cops to help make the road safer and collect data, which is ultimately what we need to hold the rideshare, the AV companies, anybody accountable.
[06:12] Jared Hoffa:
Right. We're going to jump on our next story here, which I just think is interesting because we talk about this a lot as well with Uber, and well, they've gobbled up another company. And this is from Bloomberg, and they reported, quote:
"Uber is buying catering firm ezCater for $2.3 billion in a cash deal that will help Uber Eats delivery platform reach a more corporate clientele. The Boston-based ezCater offers a platform where businesses can arrange for food services at events, meetings, and other gatherings. Uber said in a statement: 'On average, ezCater's customers spend more than $400 per order, and this acquisition will help better position Uber against rival DoorDash, which right now is the leading food delivery platform in the US.'"
I will say, actually, just as a consumer and doing events or being part of events and having to get food, you know, we've done the Uber Eats type of stuff and it always has been kind of a disaster if it's not a small order—you know, if it's 50-plus people. And so this could be a really good thing.
I guess it also comes down to: how are they going to treat the delivery driver too, right? I feel like ezCater probably pays those drivers and delivery people a lot better than Uber Eats. Well, I mean, that's my assumption. Here's your thoughts on it.
[07:36] Bryant Greening:
I would assume so also. I think really the big story here is that Uber is once again finding a way to diversify its portfolio. They have done a great job of entering various different rideshare and gig-related spaces.
Obviously, their bread and butter is rideshare, but they have Uber Eats, which competes with Grubhub and DoorDash and all the others. They've entered into bicycles and scooters, transportation to medical appointments, teen accounts, and all these different things. And this is just proof again that Uber is trying to be the "Uber of everything." They're trying to position themselves as one of the most important companies in our day-to-day life, of controlling everything from how we travel, to how we get our food, to how we get to our appointments.
And it's been working, and it's a reason why they dominate the space. Lyft has not diversified as well. Grubhub, for instance, doesn't diversify at all—they're one thing. Meanwhile, Uber just has its hands in all these different pots, and I think that's why it continues to be so successful.
To your point, we'll see what happens with these caterers and these delivery drivers for ezCater, because we know that as soon as Uber gets its hands on things, the workers are often the first ones to feel the heat. And things don't tend to—I'll just say things don't tend to go as well once Uber is the boss.
[09:16] Jared Hoffa:
It's true. It's true. And I was actually shocked that DoorDash is still the leading food delivery service. I thought by now Uber Eats, just by sheer volume, would be, but it is DoorDash.
And it is also kind of funny that DoorDash launched their own workplace feature in April, and Uber just buys one. So it's like, once again, it's very Uber of them to do that. They have the technology, which is what they talk about all the time: "We're a tech company, we can build all these great things," and they just buy the companies, where DoorDash actually built the platform. So that's very interesting.
[09:50] Bryant Greening:
It's much easier to acquire than to build, I think.
[09:53] Jared Hoffa:
Yeah, I would assume so, especially at that price tag.
And our final story today, going back to Waymo: a Waymo in Florida ran a red light. And this is from Bloomberg, and they reported, quote:
"A viral video posted to Threads is raising new questions about self-driving vehicles in Central Florida after it appeared to show a Waymo van moving into an Orlando intersection while the traffic light was red. The video, posted Sunday, had more than 600,000 views and hundreds of comments Monday evening. It shows that a Waymo self-driving van was inching through the intersection of Kirkman Road and Carrier Drive at a red light. The vehicle then continues through the intersection despite cross traffic and then changes lanes mid-intersection as the light turns green. The video is not the only recent post drawing attention to Waymo vehicles in the area. Another social media user shared a photo of what appeared to be the same van with the same license plate stopped at a green light on Sand Lake Road days earlier, refusing to move."
I wanted to bring this up today. First off, it's what we're talking about: is the tech ready? But a lot of our conversations and even articles in the news about Waymo and the technology typically focus on all of them as sort of a hive mind, as everything—it's all or nothing. So if the tech's broke, it's broken in all the cars; if it's working, it's working in all the cars.
This seems to be a scenario where it's actually the individual vehicle that's having problems, not a fleet of Waymo vans. And so I wonder how that changes things like liability during crashes, who's at fault, and all kinds of things, because it seems like it could be a different situation.
[11:40] Bryant Greening:
Yeah. Well, that's an interesting question because when you're talking about liability, you have to find out what went wrong and who was at fault. And if Waymo's overall technology is broken, well, then Waymo's at fault. But perhaps when there's individual cars that are at issue, maybe it's a maintenance problem. Maybe there's a contractor who's in charge with installing one of the certain sensors, or for fixing or repairing one of the sensors, and then signing off on it that it's been adequately fixed.
We don't know what causes issues in these individual cars until we get our hands on them and can have experts weigh in on what went wrong.
My opinion is that when these cars are put out onto the roadway en masse, that when there are issues, we need to have a clear understanding of who's going to be responsible for every event. I think that there needs to be laws that say: if a Waymo car causes a crash, then Waymo is responsible and Waymo's insurance policy needs to pay.
I don't want to put ourselves in a situation where every motor vehicle collision involving a Waymo car turns into a products liability case where we need to hire an expert to take the car apart, to monitor each and every sensor, and to try to determine what exactly failed in each particular situation. That becomes way too burdensome. It becomes way too expensive. And the people who pay for that are the people who were injured by the crash. They're the ones who have the burden of establishing what went wrong. It shouldn't be that difficult.
So when we're talking about liability, when we're talking about personal injury or property damage, let's make laws that tell our society, that tell the companies who's responsible when one of these cars crashes, rather than leave it up to which sensor was broken and how did it get that way. So that's my two cents there.
[13:50] Jared Hoffa:
Yeah. And we discussed this before—that I think they would love to have it be forced in that direction of, "Hey, let's turn this into a lengthy process that you don't want to pay for anyways, nor can afford if you're injured, and go through the individual pieces of the car specifically," like you said. Then they can kind of skirt away because people will be discouraged, lawyers won't take the case.
And that's why this is interesting. Nothing happened—in this article, it doesn't say that it hit anyone or crashed—but it's obviously having issues, and it's clearly this specific vehicle. I think the article actually talks about three times that it had issues over a period of days.
So Waymo has not responded. I don't know if they're just going to take that car off the road, but it just leaves a lot of questions seeing that this is an individual issue here. It seems like not a group software problem.
[14:40] Bryant Greening:
Right. I think it's scary that individual cars are at issue. I think I'd rather there be a group software problem because then we can find the bug and fix it. But if every car on the roadway is independent of the others and every car on the roadway can have its own technical difficulty, that puts a lot more people at risk because I don't think that Waymo is going to be checking each one of these cars every day to make sure that they're working 100% properly. It's not feasible to do that.
So if each one of these cars can have individual glitches, that's going to put a lot of people at risk when the fix is not easy and is going to take time and resources and discovery. So there might be a ticking time bomb out there that nobody knows about, and then one day something goes wrong and there's a catastrophe. That's really scary.
[15:36] Jared Hoffa:
Yeah. No, it's a really good point, and I agree. I'm on the same side with you on that. I'd rather it be a software update that all of them get fixed, not, like you said, an individual car that we don't even know has problems yet.
So scary stuff. It's obviously new tech, and it's here, so we're just going to have to deal with it, I guess.
That is the stories for this week. And of course, I'll give you the final say, Bryant, before we head into Friday and then, of course, the weekend.
[16:00] Bryant Greening:
Yeah, we always remind everybody that if you find yourself injured in a rideshare or gig or autonomous vehicle crash, you should contact LegalRideshare immediately. Our consultations are always free. You can find all of our contact information on our website, legalrideshare.com. We help you recover things like medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering, any damage that you sustain. So please don't hesitate to reach out, and we will be waiting by the phone.
[16:28] Jared Hoffa:
Thank you, Bryant. As I like to say, that is the end of This Week in Rideshare. See you next week!