Pedestrian has to literally give autonomous car ‘a hand’ in viral clip

Funny footage caught the moment a man had to step in to give a hand – quite literally – to a stuck autonomous vehicle. 

In the clip, which has since gone viral, the vehicle can be seen rocking backward and forwards between two speed bumps, completely stuck. 

A man on a scooter drives up alongside but rather than help, he does what most of us would do, and whips out his camera to film the incident. 

READ MORE! Waymo driverless car goes viral after being spotted out for a drive

At this point, a second man – wearing a pretty awesome hat – arrives on the scene and approaches the trapped Neolix vehicle.

He leans over and gives the car a gentle push freeing it from its speed bump prison.

Not all heroes wear capes, some wear safari hats.

Autonomous vehicles are becoming more common throughout the world – as technology advances rapidly. 

Tesla recently celebrated an important milestone with over one billion miles driven using FSD, its Full Self-Driving mode.

However, the company has pointed out that a fully autonomous car is ‘dependent on achieving reliability far in excess of human drivers as demonstrated by billions of miles of experience’. 

Nonetheless, Phoenix, Arizona, and San Francisco, California have both welcomed Waymo’s self-driving taxis – that work in a similar way to Uber – with customers hailing their cab through an app. 

However, it’s fair to say it hasn’t all been smooth sailing.

Earlier this month, local news outlet Arizona Family reported that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is already investigating over 10 traffic violations and/or crashes involving Waymo vehicles.

The news outlet also shared a clip that appeared to show one of the driverless vehicles swaying and struggling to stay in its lane. 

Meanwhile, a man called Jason Carr took to the streets of Arizona in a specially designed t-shirt in an attempt to trick the tech. Carr donned a t-shirt with a ‘STOP’ sign emblazoned on the front and stood on the roadside to see how the car would react.

Of course, a manned taxi wouldn’t brake for a t-shirt, but after spotting Carr the driverless car did indeed stop and didn’t continue with its journey until he moved on.

This again goes to show that the so-called smart tech could still benefit from some human interaction.