Waymo’s autonomous ride-hailing service is going through a lot of firsts these days.
Earlier this week, a pregnant woman in San Francisco gave birth inside one of the company’s self-driving vehicles while taking it to the hospital in lieu of an ambulance.
Now, a different woman has experienced a very different kind of first when she hailed a Waymo cab for her daughter in Los Angeles. As she lays out in a video that has since gone viral on TikTok, she was baffled to find a stranger hiding in the vehicle’s trunk.
“Why the f*** are you in the trunk?!” the mother yells at him.
“This s*** won’t let me out,” he replied, while punching the back of the headrest.
“They put me in here,” the man claimed. “The people. The people.”
In a followup video, the mother can be heard chatting remotely with a Waymo representative while the man was being apprehended by two police officers on the sidewalk after being freed from the trunk.
It’s hard to imagine this kind of thing happening if a human driver were involved, as having a man hiding in the trunk would’ve been noticed immediately.
In a statement, Waymo didn’t deny the incident had happened.
“We’re committed to keeping our riders safe and earning the trust of the communities where we operate,” a Waymo spokesperson told the New York Post. “This experience was unacceptable, and we are actively implementing changes to address this.”
Users on the Waymo subreddit were taken aback. Many who had initially called out the video for being fake had to eat their words.
“I was one of the people who doubted you and others saying this was real — I’m eating crow as we speak lol,” one wrote.
Others were distraught by the unruly behavior.
“Man, humans go out of their way to ruin every single f***ing thing,” another lamented.
While we have no clear indication of what the man’s motive was, some suggested it was a “sex thing.” One person pointed out it was trivially easy to get out of the trunk by pressing a large button on the back of the rear passenger seat to fold it down in Waymo’s modified Jaguar i-Pace.
Others pointed out the man would’ve had to dive into the trunk from the backseats, as approaching the trunk to climb in could’ve easily been captured on camera and picked up by sensors.
“It seems extremely bizarre that Waymo, armed to the teeth with cameras and capable of detecting left-behind items, was unable to detect the security/safety threat of a human being stowed in the luggage area,” one observer pointed out.
Some called on Waymo to implement better security measures and possibly a sensor in the trunk.
Considering Waymo’s plans to expand into a number of different cities across North America — the company currently operates in LA, San Francisco, Phoenix, Atlanta, and Austin — we’ll likely hear from even more unusual run-ins.
Just last week, police officers were stunned after a self-driving Waymo blasted through an active standoff in downtown LA. The company’s vehicles have also run over several dogs, and at least one beloved bodega cat.
As for the mother, she received a credit for a future ride from the firm.
“That’s crazy,” she said in her followup video.
More on Waymo: Cops Stunned as Waymo Cruises Through Active Police Standoff