Get in, Loser—We’re Chasing a Waymo Into the Future

TLC (Teaching and Learning College)

Get in, Loser—We’re Chasing a Waymo Into the Future

November 21, 2024 at 08:12PM

In San Francisco, LA, Phoenix, and Wuhan, China, you can call a robotaxi to get to your brunch reservation; Waymo’s fleet of Jaguars is all over the City By the Bay. Are they safe? Are people using them? How do they drive? What’s it like to take one? To find answers and give those of us who don’t live in a tech hub a sneak peak into our not-so-distant futures, WIRED staff spent a day crammed into a taxi tracking their robo-prey.

To provide the most useful dispatch from the future, then, we realized we needed a way to make self-driving cars feel strange again. A way to scare up the less superficial lessons of our city’s years with Waymo. We got to thinking.

San Francisco has provided a backdrop for: (A) the dawn of the ubiquitous self-driving taxi; and (B) at least one of the most iconic car chase scenes in movie history. So WIRED decided that the best way to juice some meaning and adrenaline out of the self-driving future would be to tail it in hot pursuit.

Our idea: We’ll pile a few of us into an old-fashioned, human-piloted hired car, then follow a single Waymo robotaxi wherever it goes for a whole workday. We’ll study its movements, its relationship to life on the streets, its whole self-driving gestalt. We’ll interview as many of its passengers as will speak to us, and observe it through the eyes of the kind of human driver it’s designed to replace. We’ll chase it for no fewer than six hours, or until we get into a fiery crash. Whichever comes first.

The impact on cities and traffic will probably be significant unless cities start bargaining with robocar companies and exploring policies like congestion pricing. But in the end, most riders’ favorite thing about Waymo wasn’t efficiency, or price, or safety, but not having to be in a car with another human—never underestimate how few people enjoy small talk with drivers, even if the trade-off for quiet is a slightly glitchy ride.

She loves it, loves having the space to herself. But she did once have to call customer support, because her car got confused by some traffic cones.



from Longreads https://longreads.com/2024/11/21/get-in-loser-were-chasing-a-waymo-into-the-future/
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