Waymo will call you mid-ride to let you know not to record your driverless taxi ride

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If you missed the news this week, Waymo, a self-driving car company, deployed a fleet of fully-driverless taxis in and around Phoenix, Arizona. These vans are being used to pick up Waymo One users, their friends and families, and soon, users of the main Waymo app will have the option for a driverless taxi, as well.

This is a big step forward in the world of self-driving, and people using the service are obviously excited and want to share photos and videos of their rides with their friends. As it turns out, however, Waymo doesn’t really want you sharing that footage quite yet, as made apparent by this video over on Reddit.

In the video, you can see two people recording themselves getting into the driverless taxi, as well as recording the beginning part of their ride. Then something…strange happens. A voice comes over the speakers, noting that the riders are being connected to Waymo rider support. You can see how the rest plays out below.

Waymo Will Stop the Ride if you Record from r/PublicFreakout

If you don’t feel like watching the video, or can’t hear the audio, here’s what happens: Someone named Ashley from Customer Support connects through the car’s speakers and lets the passengers know that they can’t record their ride. Then the video cuts out.

While it is kind of to be expected that Waymo would discourage riders from sharing early footage of this system, it is a bit surprising to see how actively the company is monitoring these self-driving rides.

What do you think? Surprised that Waymo has people literally watching riders? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

Editors’ Recommendations:

• GM’s push into the driverless car world is… self-driving shuttle buses?
• Tesla kills its PR department, starts work on actual self-driving dragons and humans as fuel
• Elon Musk says the Tesla Model S will now cost $69,420 – Nice.
• Tesla calling its driver-assist feature “self-driving” is misleading, says new report

Josiah Motley

Former KnowTechie editor.