Earlier this week in Los Angeles, a mother ordering a Waymo autonomous cab for her daughter did a little act of kindness that most people probably wouldn’t even consider. It ended up being one of the smartest decisions she’s ever made: she checked the back of the car.
It’s a good thing she did, too, because she found a man wedged behind the rear seat in the trunk. He was yelling that he couldn’t get out and claiming that he had been put there by unnamed people.
The woman yanked her daughter away from the car and canceled the ride. She promptly called 911. She did all this while recording it on video, which quickly went viral on TikTok, making her active, protective motherhood all the more impressive.
While the LAPD later detained the man on the sidewalk, they never said whether he was arrested. They say they’re reviewing footage and working with Waymo to figure out how someone can end up hiding inside of a driverless car without triggering any of its alarms.
Waymo, for its part, has called the whole thing “unacceptable” and said it’s going to be implementing changes to prevent more weirdos from hiding in the trunks of driverless cars.
No one is sure how any of this happened at all in the first place. The best theories out there aren’t coming from the police, but from internet sleuths trying their hardest to explain something that feels nearly inexplicable.
Woman Says She Found a Man Hiding Inside the Trunk of Her Waymo
Leading theories suggest that the guy climbed in from the back seat after the previous ride. Theories have a lot of information to take into account, such as how Waymo cars are equipped with cameras and sensors designed to detect forgotten backpacks, stray water bottles, and the like.
How it missed an entire man stuffing himself in the trunk is a mystery. Considering that Waymo hasn’t confirmed how the man got in there either, it sounds like they probably don’t know much more than anyone else.
For as much success as Waymo has experienced in the past year alone, as it’s made tremendous strides in getting its vehicles in cities from coast to coast, the expansion has led to a series of sometimes embarrassing, other times deeply troubling problems.
From three Waymo car pileups to running over beloved neighborhood cats, to issuing recalls of over 3,000 of its cars because they keep blowing through school bus stops, the company is having a hard time scaling up its services.
The post Mom Orders a Waymo for Her Daughter, Finds Man Hiding in the Trunk Claiming ‘The People’ Trapped Him appeared first on VICE.
