You may view self-driving cars as a thing of the future, merely an element of a distant reality destined to be a figment of your favorite science fiction novel. But that future is here today in multiple cities across the United States. In Phoenix, Ariz., San Francisco, Calif. and Los Angeles, Calif., a company called Waymo has hit the streets with its autonomous taxi service.
Waymo is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., the same company that parents Google. Since its founding in 2009, the company has operated its fully autonomous ride-hailing service since 2020.
This car is the first of its kind. No driver sits at the wheel and the passenger doesn’t even have to sit in the driver’s seat. The car has a steering wheel that rotates while the car navigates the city, creating a feeling of uncertainty for some passengers. It’s like an Uber without cheerful banter, or, depending on how you see it, awkward conversation.
Each unit carries cameras, radar and Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR), a type of sensor that measures distance between the car and other objects using, “light in the form of a pulsed laser” (NOAA). All these different pieces of technology help the car visualize the world around it to a tee as it takes in the information from its sensors and uses complicated algorithms to decide what the best route is at intersections, traffic lights and pedestrian-related conflicts.
The Waymo has proven to be much safer than a human driver. With the ability to not feel emotion or be distracted, it is constantly able to keep its “eyes” on the road. Since its creation in 2020, there have only been 20 collisions involving one of its drivers, none resulting in injury and most without reported damage to the other vehicle. Compared to average human drivers, they’ve had 84 percent less airbag deployments and 73 percent less injury-causing crashes. However, despite these attractive numbers, the Waymo driver isn’t perfect.
First of all, the car can make strange decisions when deciding how it wants to get you from Point A to Point B. According to an article from the San Francisco Chronicle, instead of taking the main throughways, the driver will sometimes opt for unexplainable backstreet routes that can take longer than if you were to hop into an Uber with a human, who obtains understandable decision-making through experience. This can be blamed on the car’s extra safe programming. Hazards like construction, traffic and reported collisions can lead to the car steering off the path to avoid such things. This slight malfunction can make your ride take longer than one piloted by a human brain.
Professional drivers also have a legitimate complaint about not just Waymo, but self-driving vehicles in general. Many people across the country, such as ridesharing company drivers and truck drivers, are reliant on driving to keep themselves and their families fed and under a roof. Autonomous cars and trucks can take jobs away from a large number of families who, unlike their robot replacements, need to be supported by someone’s salary.
Waymo’s mission is to make our roads safer and reduce driving-related injuries, but is their technology worth the new challenge of human jobs being replaced by robots? Some would say they’re fixing a nonurgent problem and worsening an already growing one.
However, autonomous vehicles are saving lives, reducing road-related injuries and inspiring new technological development. On top of that, these cars may come to Ventura, Calif., giving us a taste of the future.
