They have that, and these cars completely depend on it for fundamental parts of the stack. If they detect that their understanding of the scene doesn't match their map, they (generally) have remote operators clarify the best course of action for the car. This isn't a remote takeover - they just plot a path for it or select from a number of different options the car presents to them, or give it the all clear to proceed.
I worked in the AV space for years - not at Cruise - but during one of my first driverless rides in a Cruise car, we ran into a few blocks of SF where the power was out. About 3 street lights in a row weren't functioning. At each one the Cruise stopped completely for about 45 seconds before crossing - even if there was no traffic coming from it's left or right. That delay was so that a remote operator could clear it to proceed after it detected that there wasn't a functioning street light where it expected there to be one. After the first street light we were getting honked at and swerved around by cars behind us while it paused and waited for clarification.
Comparisons between the safety of robotaxis and human drivers are strange to make when 'robotaxis' still depend on remote operators for fundamental parts of the driving task
Cruise has exactly that. In this case however, the car decided to "pull over" autonomously after the incident, before a remote driver could get involved, and with that pulled the struck pedestrian 20 feet along the ground and pinned them under the vehicle. If it instead alerted a remote driver immediately and waited for their decision before moving again, this would've likely ended much more lightly.
Some of the players in this space do this but it doesn't work because driving via streaming video over the internet is nowhere near as effective as a human driver. And is simply not possible in a fast moving emergency, only being helpful if the car gets stuck and won't move
its not really helpful for split second judgement calls like this. If your pizzabot is stuck behind another pizzabot or can't figure out something, ok. But this happens before anyone can intervene. The switchover + time to comprehend and react remotely aren't going to change anything.
