There is always somebody ready to respond. Of course they can't take full control, that would be stupid dangerous, but they can still control the car. They even have people who go to your car to get it unstuck manually when needed.

There is someone to take over as soon as the car encounters something it cannot handle. It's not self driving. By definition it's not driverless, there is always a driver assigned who will take care of it if needed. One of the reason they cannot scale beyond small areas.

Search for "driver monitoring system". As soon as there is something unexpected there is an actual driver taking care of it. Also the reason why it's not level 5, but stuck at level 4 self driving.

> driverless taxis went from "it'll never happen" to "is this the default now?"

That's still far away, these are not driverless cars, there is always a driver monitoring, but they monitor not one but many cars, ready to take over.

I think it's working as intended. It incentivises buying a good quality plastics or cloth bag and reuse.