4 ms·

Waymo Drives Off with South Bay Man's Luggage

88 points by toss1 5mo ago

CaliforniaKarl 5mo ago
I am surprised the trunk didn't open, and I’m very surprised that Waymo support could not turn the vehicle around. I’ve had a Waymo alert me when I left something in the back seat; I’m surprised it did not do the same for the trunk. I think the person should report this to either the California DMV or CPUC, as well as the local airport authority. For autonomous vehicles, I think people need to ‘normalize’ leaving one of the doors open until all people & cargo are out of the vehicle. The vehicle may complain, but it’s not going to drive off.
- ranger_danger 5mo ago
  What happens if one were to keep leaving doors open? I wonder if they would ban you or something.
  - cosmotic 5mo ago
    Wonder no more. They order doordashers to close the door. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/12/waymo-is-paying-doordash-gig-workers-to-close-its-robotaxi-doors.html https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/12/waymo-is-paying-doordash-gig...
    - ranger_danger 5mo ago
      Interesting... I wonder if getting paid for closing the door still requires you to be active enough on the platform... otherwise I imagine you'd have people signing up for DoorDash just to stand in front of popular places and "hold the door open" for people... $10-20 a pop sounds like a good hustle.
      - lokar 5mo ago
        As a passenger, they probably silently black-list you if you do it to much
        Buildstarted 5mo ago
        I think the implication was that people stand around places where waymo goes often and just hold doors open for arriving waymo's to be "helpful". When the passenger leaves they just leave the door open for their doordash friends who are nearby
  - userbinator 5mo ago
    They would probably start to consider installing automatic doors if enough people do it.
    - jerlam 5mo ago
      Pretty sure the next generation of Waymos, the Zeekr vans, have auto-closing doors.
      - kotaKat 5mo ago
        The Ioniq 5s also got modified for automatic doors.
- disillusioned 5mo ago
  Any time I've loaded something into the trunk of a Waymo, it pre-emptively pops the trunk when I'm getting out _for_ me and reminds me to get my things from the trunk, so this is... surprising as a failure mode. Wondering if there was some issue with the latch/opening system, because it's definitely programmed to work the right way. (Or he tossed his stuff into the trunk from the main cabin, but... it's a pretty low hatch ceiling there.)
  - sparky_z 5mo ago
    Not that surprising if the thing that failed was the thing that notices whether or not you put something in the trunk in the first place. Unless it does that routine at the end of every ride, regardless of whether it thinks something is in the trunk or not, then it's not a fail safe system and occasional mishaps like this should be expected at scale.
  - BoorishBears 5mo ago
    Over hundreds rides I've found it's extremely flakey on if the trunk will open again at dropoff after opening it earlier. My guess would be the Jaguar's CAN bus being the weak link
    - 05 5mo ago
      > My guess would be the Jaguar's CAN bus being the weak link Puzzling because trunk open sensor is already a thing and making sure it’s triggered after a ‘open trunk’ command is issued is not exactly rocket science:)
      - BoorishBears 5mo ago
        Besides the CAN bus there's also a lot of other steps along the chain, their in-vehicle comms network, the uplink they're working with Waymo's own systems are sending the current volume and HVAC settings to the OEM CAN bus every tick (presumably because the HMI's traffic is very low priority and may not be delivered on their network), maybe the trunk release doesn't tolerate repeat activations because of some quirk? At that point obviously I'm guessing a bit, but the fact this issue has been prominent for so long makes me think there's some platform-specific quirk that's making it more complicated than it looks from the outside
- cheriot 5mo ago
  tbh, I do that with Uber/Lyft, too
- gboss 5mo ago
  For what it’s worth, I always leave the door I exited out of open while removing luggage from the trunk. It’s just safer. Edit: from any uber or lyft
- userbinator 5mo ago
  I’m very surprised that Waymo support could not turn the vehicle around Suppose they sent it back to you, and the trunk still doesn't open. Now what?
justinclift 5mo ago
(The sfist.com site seems to be extremely slow atm) https://web.archive.org/web/20260502234729/https://sfist.com/2026/05/01/waymo-drives-off-with-south-bay-mans-luggage-after-trunk-fails-to-open/ https://web.archive.org/web/20260502234729/https://sfist.com...
cheriot 5mo ago
Thank you, Sunnyvale man, for hitting this edge case before I do.
est31 5mo ago
This is a general fear for me whenever I take a taxi or something like it: i always remind the driver of my luggage in the back when we arrive and ask them whether they can help me get it.
userbinator 5mo ago
take two complementary rides to pick it up That seems... reasonable? They're not saying "come at your own expense" but giving him a ride there and back.
- disillusioned 5mo ago
  It'd be nicer if they sent someone with his luggage TO HIM rather than making HIM take his time to go on a tour to the depot, though.
  - chihuahua 5mo ago
    Imagine if the company had self-driving cars, they wouldn't even need "someone", they could just send one of those self-driving cars!
    - userbinator 5mo ago
      ...and then what happens if it also malfunctions in the same way when it gets there, or his stuff gets stolen on the way?
- jcgrillo 5mo ago
  No, it doesn't. It used to be when the airline lost your bag they would get it to you no matter what. They own their mistake, and make it right to the best of their ability. In the most egregious case I can recall, delivering skis and poles 4hr+ from the airport into a remote mountain village ca. 2003. This is how you build trust in your brand--when you fuck up, you take ownership and make it right. You don't just shrug it off and throw a gift card on the floor like "take it or leave it idgaf".
  - charonn0 5mo ago
    OTOH, a free trip to the depot and back is actually more than you'd get from a traditional taxi service under the same circumstances.
bastawhiz 5mo ago
This past week I took a Waymo and had difficulty exiting. It seemed like someone may have enabled the child locks. I'm overall very positive on the service, but this kind of issue needs to be addressed by the company.
geor9e 5mo ago
You can prevent this by leaving the passenger door open until you've gotten the trunk open.
- smilekzs 5mo ago
  +1. Brought up in a low-trust env and this became habitual.
krupan 5mo ago
The way this has apparently been handled saddens me. I worked for Cruise, a Waymo competitor. A Cruise vehicle famously had a very unfortunate accident and Cruise government relations employees famously tried to cover up the worst details when reporting it to the CA DMV. Of course the cover-up was discovered and guess what? Cruise lost their license and not long after lost all their funding and shut down. Self driving cars are a new technology that makes a lot of people nervous. For it to succeed those nerves need to be acknowledged and settled. This is life and death for the business and technology! Also, Waymo's customers (and really all of us sharing the road with them) are very much providing Waymo a huge service as early beta testers. They need to be treated extremely well right now. It is not the time for Waymo to be trying to keep things quiet, dismissing concerns, and making half assed restitution for problems. Again, This is life and death for the technology and your company, Waymo! Every bit as important as the engineering work you are doing. Please don't screw this up
- toss1 5mo ago
  It is also literally insanely hostile for Waymo to respond like this. The parent company, Alphabet, is valued over four trillion dollars. The proper response would have been: "oh, terribly sorry for the inconvenience, we'll immediately turn it around, wait there". If that was somehow actually possible, the next response should have been: "Oh, sorry that is impossible because of [actual reason X], we are terribly sorry for the inconvenience, where are you going to be staying, we'll immediately pack and ship it all to you FedEx". Instead, they do this petty crap. I'm no lawyer, but as soon as someone takes off with my stuff, that sounds like theft. Sure, I willingly put it in the trunk, but it was on a contract that they would deliver me and my luggage to the destination. Refusing to allow me to retrieve it, then requiring me to come get it is just outrageous. At the very least, instead of offering the rider two rides to come fetch his stuff that they drove off with, would be to deliver it to his home at a time convenient to him. This tells me the company is run by a bunch of greedy losers. Not anyone with whom I might want to associate or do business. Really disappointing
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
plaidfuji 5mo ago
They offered him two free hour-long rides to their facility and back just to pick up the suitcase? Waymo trouble than it’s worth
- wrs 5mo ago
  Why couldn’t they just stick the suitcase in a Waymo and send it to him?
  - danparsonson 5mo ago
    Sounds like there's no guarantee it would let him retrieve it
- chaboud 5mo ago
  That's like a free bus ride to Cleveland... if I wanted to go, I'd happily get myself there.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
chaboud 5mo ago
Fearful that a simple software issue could do exactly this, I have adopted an approach to using Waymo with luggage: 1. Get out. 2. Leave the door open. 3. Open the trunk. 4. Get stuff. 5. Close the trunk. 6. Close the door that I left open. I've had enough stupid stuff happen in a Waymo. I'm not going to leave it to faith that it won't drive off with my laptop, etc.
- tasoeur 5mo ago
  That’s funny, I’ve actually used the same algorithm but with taxis in general, for having the same exact issue as the person in this article… but with a real driver. (All of this assuming it’s safe to keep a door open!)
  - chaboud 5mo ago
    Well, it's safe for me!
bryan_w 5mo ago
Not keeping the door open while grabbing luggage is NPC behavior no matter if it's waymo, Uber or a taxi. The fact he mad this mistake, then went to the news media to broadcast his bad decision making is embarrassing. I bet he finds himself the victim of bad situations all the time and doesn't know why
- idrissbellil 5mo ago
  wow these shitty comments/people blaming the victim for not taking more precaution are everywhere

88 points by toss1 5mo ago

I am surprised the trunk didn't open, and I’m very surprised that Waymo support could not turn the vehicle around. I’ve had a Waymo alert me when I left something in the back seat; I’m surprised it did not do the same for the trunk. I think the person should report this to either the California DMV or CPUC, as well as the local airport authority. For autonomous vehicles, I think people need to ‘normalize’ leaving one of the doors open until all people & cargo are out of the vehicle. The vehicle may complain, but it’s not going to drive off.

ranger_danger 5mo ago
What happens if one were to keep leaving doors open? I wonder if they would ban you or something.
- cosmotic 5mo ago
  Wonder no more. They order doordashers to close the door. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/12/waymo-is-paying-doordash-gig-workers-to-close-its-robotaxi-doors.html https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/12/waymo-is-paying-doordash-gig...
  - ranger_danger 5mo ago
    Interesting... I wonder if getting paid for closing the door still requires you to be active enough on the platform... otherwise I imagine you'd have people signing up for DoorDash just to stand in front of popular places and "hold the door open" for people... $10-20 a pop sounds like a good hustle.
    - lokar 5mo ago
      As a passenger, they probably silently black-list you if you do it to much
      - Buildstarted 5mo ago
        I think the implication was that people stand around places where waymo goes often and just hold doors open for arriving waymo's to be "helpful". When the passenger leaves they just leave the door open for their doordash friends who are nearby
- userbinator 5mo ago
  They would probably start to consider installing automatic doors if enough people do it.
  - jerlam 5mo ago
    Pretty sure the next generation of Waymos, the Zeekr vans, have auto-closing doors.
    - kotaKat 5mo ago
      The Ioniq 5s also got modified for automatic doors.
disillusioned 5mo ago
Any time I've loaded something into the trunk of a Waymo, it pre-emptively pops the trunk when I'm getting out _for_ me and reminds me to get my things from the trunk, so this is... surprising as a failure mode. Wondering if there was some issue with the latch/opening system, because it's definitely programmed to work the right way. (Or he tossed his stuff into the trunk from the main cabin, but... it's a pretty low hatch ceiling there.)
- sparky_z 5mo ago
  Not that surprising if the thing that failed was the thing that notices whether or not you put something in the trunk in the first place. Unless it does that routine at the end of every ride, regardless of whether it thinks something is in the trunk or not, then it's not a fail safe system and occasional mishaps like this should be expected at scale.
- BoorishBears 5mo ago
  Over hundreds rides I've found it's extremely flakey on if the trunk will open again at dropoff after opening it earlier. My guess would be the Jaguar's CAN bus being the weak link
  - 05 5mo ago
    > My guess would be the Jaguar's CAN bus being the weak link Puzzling because trunk open sensor is already a thing and making sure it’s triggered after a ‘open trunk’ command is issued is not exactly rocket science:)
    - BoorishBears 5mo ago
      Besides the CAN bus there's also a lot of other steps along the chain, their in-vehicle comms network, the uplink they're working with Waymo's own systems are sending the current volume and HVAC settings to the OEM CAN bus every tick (presumably because the HMI's traffic is very low priority and may not be delivered on their network), maybe the trunk release doesn't tolerate repeat activations because of some quirk? At that point obviously I'm guessing a bit, but the fact this issue has been prominent for so long makes me think there's some platform-specific quirk that's making it more complicated than it looks from the outside
cheriot 5mo ago
tbh, I do that with Uber/Lyft, too
gboss 5mo ago
For what it’s worth, I always leave the door I exited out of open while removing luggage from the trunk. It’s just safer. Edit: from any uber or lyft
userbinator 5mo ago
I’m very surprised that Waymo support could not turn the vehicle around Suppose they sent it back to you, and the trunk still doesn't open. Now what?

justinclift 5mo ago

(The sfist.com site seems to be extremely slow atm) https://web.archive.org/web/20260502234729/https://sfist.com/2026/05/01/waymo-drives-off-with-south-bay-mans-luggage-after-trunk-fails-to-open/ https://web.archive.org/web/20260502234729/https://sfist.com...

cheriot 5mo ago

Thank you, Sunnyvale man, for hitting this edge case before I do.

est31 5mo ago

This is a general fear for me whenever I take a taxi or something like it: i always remind the driver of my luggage in the back when we arrive and ask them whether they can help me get it.

userbinator 5mo ago

take two complementary rides to pick it up That seems... reasonable? They're not saying "come at your own expense" but giving him a ride there and back.

disillusioned 5mo ago
It'd be nicer if they sent someone with his luggage TO HIM rather than making HIM take his time to go on a tour to the depot, though.
- chihuahua 5mo ago
  Imagine if the company had self-driving cars, they wouldn't even need "someone", they could just send one of those self-driving cars!
  - userbinator 5mo ago
    ...and then what happens if it also malfunctions in the same way when it gets there, or his stuff gets stolen on the way?
jcgrillo 5mo ago
No, it doesn't. It used to be when the airline lost your bag they would get it to you no matter what. They own their mistake, and make it right to the best of their ability. In the most egregious case I can recall, delivering skis and poles 4hr+ from the airport into a remote mountain village ca. 2003. This is how you build trust in your brand--when you fuck up, you take ownership and make it right. You don't just shrug it off and throw a gift card on the floor like "take it or leave it idgaf".
- charonn0 5mo ago
  OTOH, a free trip to the depot and back is actually more than you'd get from a traditional taxi service under the same circumstances.

bastawhiz 5mo ago

This past week I took a Waymo and had difficulty exiting. It seemed like someone may have enabled the child locks. I'm overall very positive on the service, but this kind of issue needs to be addressed by the company.

geor9e 5mo ago

You can prevent this by leaving the passenger door open until you've gotten the trunk open.

smilekzs 5mo ago
+1. Brought up in a low-trust env and this became habitual.

krupan 5mo ago

The way this has apparently been handled saddens me. I worked for Cruise, a Waymo competitor. A Cruise vehicle famously had a very unfortunate accident and Cruise government relations employees famously tried to cover up the worst details when reporting it to the CA DMV. Of course the cover-up was discovered and guess what? Cruise lost their license and not long after lost all their funding and shut down. Self driving cars are a new technology that makes a lot of people nervous. For it to succeed those nerves need to be acknowledged and settled. This is life and death for the business and technology! Also, Waymo's customers (and really all of us sharing the road with them) are very much providing Waymo a huge service as early beta testers. They need to be treated extremely well right now. It is not the time for Waymo to be trying to keep things quiet, dismissing concerns, and making half assed restitution for problems. Again, This is life and death for the technology and your company, Waymo! Every bit as important as the engineering work you are doing. Please don't screw this up

toss1 5mo ago
It is also literally insanely hostile for Waymo to respond like this. The parent company, Alphabet, is valued over four trillion dollars. The proper response would have been: "oh, terribly sorry for the inconvenience, we'll immediately turn it around, wait there". If that was somehow actually possible, the next response should have been: "Oh, sorry that is impossible because of [actual reason X], we are terribly sorry for the inconvenience, where are you going to be staying, we'll immediately pack and ship it all to you FedEx". Instead, they do this petty crap. I'm no lawyer, but as soon as someone takes off with my stuff, that sounds like theft. Sure, I willingly put it in the trunk, but it was on a contract that they would deliver me and my luggage to the destination. Refusing to allow me to retrieve it, then requiring me to come get it is just outrageous. At the very least, instead of offering the rider two rides to come fetch his stuff that they drove off with, would be to deliver it to his home at a time convenient to him. This tells me the company is run by a bunch of greedy losers. Not anyone with whom I might want to associate or do business. Really disappointing
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]

plaidfuji 5mo ago

They offered him two free hour-long rides to their facility and back just to pick up the suitcase? Waymo trouble than it’s worth

wrs 5mo ago
Why couldn’t they just stick the suitcase in a Waymo and send it to him?
- danparsonson 5mo ago
  Sounds like there's no guarantee it would let him retrieve it
chaboud 5mo ago
That's like a free bus ride to Cleveland... if I wanted to go, I'd happily get myself there.

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

chaboud 5mo ago

Fearful that a simple software issue could do exactly this, I have adopted an approach to using Waymo with luggage: 1. Get out. 2. Leave the door open. 3. Open the trunk. 4. Get stuff. 5. Close the trunk. 6. Close the door that I left open. I've had enough stupid stuff happen in a Waymo. I'm not going to leave it to faith that it won't drive off with my laptop, etc.

tasoeur 5mo ago
That’s funny, I’ve actually used the same algorithm but with taxis in general, for having the same exact issue as the person in this article… but with a real driver. (All of this assuming it’s safe to keep a door open!)
- chaboud 5mo ago
  Well, it's safe for me!

bryan_w 5mo ago

Not keeping the door open while grabbing luggage is NPC behavior no matter if it's waymo, Uber or a taxi. The fact he mad this mistake, then went to the news media to broadcast his bad decision making is embarrassing. I bet he finds himself the victim of bad situations all the time and doesn't know why

idrissbellil 5mo ago
wow these shitty comments/people blaming the victim for not taking more precaution are everywhere