I probably would have looked for a stop button in the app before calling a phone number because that's faster. It seems weird there isn't a physical stop button inside the car.
You can see on the map that it goes into the drop off lane, for some reason thinks it can’t drop him off, so drives back into the car park, turns around, and heads back into the drop off lane. It’s not like it’s stuck in full lock doing donuts.
Sitting inside a malfunctioning robot taxi, helplessly, with no clarity why its doing that. And being afraid it could do some thing more erratic, like going fast and hit a wall, or do some other life threatening thing.
Bugs like these are not acceptable in machines where humans sit.
The headline is clickbait -- the car absolutely was not "spinning in circles".
It was driving around a parking lot multiple times.
I agree that clarity would be appreciated -- since this seems to be a routing issue, if the car explained it couldn't find a spot to stop so it was going around again. But of all the problems a self-driving car could have, safely repeating a loop around a parking lot is about as benign as you can get.
This is extremely normal driver behavior at airports when you're waiting for someone arriving to come out, and you're not allowed to stop at the curb for longer than a minute.
Think it through once more.
For the down voters: It would be extremely dangerous if somebody pressed such a button when the car is going down the highway. The real world is not a video game where you can just abort or pause at any time. If you try, you will die.
An emergency stop routine should involve a code path designed to bring the car to a stop in a safe location as soon as practical. It should be thoroughly tested on degraded hardware with minimal branching relative to normal operation. It should also activate the hazard lights, contact the operator's emergency department, unlock all the doors, and lower the windows.