When the going gets unpredictable in your Waymo, a foreign driver takes over.
That’s the slightly unnerving revelation made by the self-drive company in a recent Senate inquiry.
Waymo’s chief safety officer Mauricio Peña told the senate commerce committee some of its remote operators are contractors working in other countries, including the Philippines.
They step in when the robotaxis need backup.
He explained the international operators provide ‘real-time guidance’ as opposed to actually driving the cars remotely, according to KTLA.
The foreign controller revelation comes as Californian deal with an alarming rise in incidents involving autonomous vehicles, many captured on video.
Waymo is under federal investigation after one of its self-driving vehicles struck a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica last week.
Two days before that, a wayward Waymo wildly crashed into several parked cars while careening downhill in Echo Park, narrowly missing two bystanders.
Some have expressed their frustrations at safety in neighborhoods as safety concerns and skepticism loom over the ‘drivers’ of the future.
In one incident in December, a Waymo snarled traffic for 45 minutes at the popular Venice Canals Boat Parade Los Angeles — after it glitched out and stalled on a bridge.