Putting aside all the late stage capitalism going on here, I still can't get over the fact that Alphabet (Google) spent billions of dollars developing self driving car technology only to arrive at, "Oh shit. Someone left the car door open. What do we do now?"
this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2026
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Giving them the ability to close their own doors just screams "kid's arm smashed in automatic car door failure".
That's silly. This is already a ubiquitous feature in minivans.
I used to have a Tesla (traded it in). In the app you could open, but not close, the windows. It could be inconvenient at times but I assume the reasoning was similar.
That’s weird. Most of the cars I have had can open and close the windows from the fob. (Usually double press then hold unlock or lock, though one car I had [Accord] required the key in the door for the windows to go up.)
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This shows you just how strong our culture is an influence here. You can leave a door open and cause enough trouble that they need to hire someone else to go manually shut it. I’m willing to bet there are a lot of seemingly innocuous ways to cause friction with these companies. The more people know and exploit them, the better.
Supposedly a salt circle drawn like "no entry" road markings can trap them.
And, as a bonus, any ghosts or demons therein!
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When I was a kid my dad would drive forward and slam the brakes to close our van door.
It was really fun until that became the only way that closed the door.
Clearly that's why it's called DoorDash. /s
Take my upvote and gtfo 😂
Does it charge extra to the last person that used the Waymo to cover the cost? Because if not, might as well just leave the door open every time, now you're a job creator.
They have self-driving cars, but self-closing doors is still at least 10-15 years away.
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Why can't they build a mechanism where the car can close its own doors. I thought that would be the smaller part compared to autonomous self driving
The gig worker is the mechanism. Very innovative tech.
I know I can shut a passenger side car door with just the accelerator and brakes. If it's not latched completely then a bollard or a curbside tree will suffice.
Human driven taxis have mechanically closing passenger doors for decades. It's a big bug software and a management a failure . This can't be street legal. Autonomous cabs are billionaires snake oil
Hell, the Mexican colectivo van driver closes the sliding doors on his rattly 20 year old van simply by hard braking.
Give people a dollar discount off their ride if they close the door on the way out.
Why are people leaving the doors open in the first place that's just wild. The super excited to get to work or something I don't get it.
Wouldn't the simplest solution be to just ban people who leave the doors open, it's not that hard to close them.
Probably the doors are in the "unlatched" position rather than wide open.
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But charge an extra dollar first
have a friend stalk Waymo’s and give the passenger $5 to leave the door ajar a bit .
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Hmmm…so it costs Waymo $11.25 if you “forget” to shut the door.
Maybe people will become very forgetful.
Or, upon reflection, just don’t use Waymo, and don’t play into it at all.
If you leave it all the way open, the car just needs to drive a couple feet with decent acceleration to close it.
If you ALMOST close it, but not all the way, that would require some sort of intervention.
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The cost of doing business is to pay a poor to close a door and keep the wheels of progress spinning.
so from now on leave all waymo's doors open and if you see one open no you don't
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see? ai does create new jobs. checkmate ai doomers /s
Its funny because in the US, there are regulations that make it such that, even if they have the capability to close the doors remotely and anti pinch sensors etc, they are not allowed to unless it is done by someone from a device nearby while they hold down the close button.
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