Waymo’s self-driving robotic cabs are rapidly rolling out worldwide. The billion-dollar cars, packed with artificial intelligence, can navigate, brake and merge independently. However, there is one basic action that the advanced software has no answer for. It now forces the tech company to hire freelancers at hefty fees to do physical manual work.
While the debate over the safety of autonomous vehicles continues, Waymo, a sister company of Google, is steadily building an empire in the United States. The company already currently operates fully self-driving cabs in 10 U.S. cities and has announced it will cross into Europe in September 2026 with a launch in London.
The cars drive impressively smoothly and safely without a driver through the busiest cities. But the technology encounters a barrier as unexpected as it is wonky: the oblivious passenger.
The high-tech cab paralyzed by an open door
Once a ride is finished and a customer gets out, the car relies on the passenger to close the door behind him. If it does not, a deadlock occurs. For safety reasons, a Waymo cab simply should not and cannot start driving with an open door.
Because the current vehicles are not equipped with motors that can independently pull the doors into the lock, the vehicle instantly turns from an autonomous marvel into an extremely expensive, steel obstacle in the middle of the street. The cab keeps waiting for a command that does not come, until a human hand intervenes.
Freelancers earn $24 for two seconds of work
To solve this problem without sending its own staff all over town, Waymo in America is making clever use of the gig economy. People who work for platforms like DoorDash and offer their services get push notifications on their phones with a specific task: find the blocked Waymo cab and close the door.
According to documents circulating online, in cities such as Los Angeles and Atlanta, these freelancers are paid substantial fees for this simple task. Where the base rate starts at just over six dollars, bonuses can increase the pay to as much as $24 per job. Converted to an hourly wage, that’s an insane amount for an arm movement that literally takes two seconds.
The limit of automation
A Waymo spokeswoman indicated that the problem does not occur daily and that the company is committed to better instructing passengers. Still, this particular problem flawlessly demonstrates where the limits of the current autonomous revolution lie.
Tech companies can invest billions in LiDAR scanners, dual computing systems and neural networks to predict every conceivable traffic situation, but they still depend on the simple cooperation of humans. The future of transportation is expected to be fast approaching, but for now it cannot be done without a manual push at the right time.
Image source: NL Image / Gonzales photo
