The Patriot Post® · Three Rides in a Waymo and I Was Taking Driverless Cars for Granted

I have a WhatsApp group with two of my nieces called “Uncle Jeff needs help.” They set it up because I can never seem to get the hang of technology that all my younger relatives take for granted. I didn’t get a cell phone until 2018. I still can’t set up a Zoom call without assistance. When my computer tells me to upgrade to Windows 11 or my alarm clock app keeps falling asleep, I turn to my personal IT help desk for guidance.

So it came as a surprise to everyone when I became the first person in my family to ride in a driverless car.

I was in Los Angeles two weeks ago when I saw my first Waymo cab. Crossing an intersection during an early-morning walk, I spotted a white Jaguar with what looked like a spinning black dome light mounted on the roof. My first thought was that someone must be updating images for Google Street View. But when I looked more closely, I realized with a jolt that no one was sitting behind the wheel. The car waiting patiently for the light to change was driving itself. “Incredible!” I thought.

I saw a few more Waymos by the time I got back to my hotel. In an email to my editor, I mentioned being “a little freaked out” by the sight of cars with no drivers, but also intrigued. “I may have to give it a try,” I wrote.

She replied at once: “Try the Waymo!!”

So I did.

I created a Waymo account, which was as easy as setting one up for Lyft or Uber. The app works much the same way — you enter your destination, get an estimated wait time, and pay for the ride. The main difference, of course, is that there’s no driver listed in the confirmation.

The app offered walking directions to the pickup location, flashing distances and arrows as I approached. Waymos can’t just stop anywhere; they’re programmed to pull over at the nearest spot where it’s safe for a passenger to get in or out.

More baffling was figuring out how to unlock the car. I reached for the handle, but it was flush against the door and wouldn’t budge. And there was no driver to open it! But eventually I noticed the “Unlock Car” option on the app: mystery solved.

As I got in, a digital voice greeted me: “Hi, Jeff!” It ran through safety reminders, confirmed my seat belt was buckled, and noted that Waymo’s internal cameras would be recording. Fair enough — after all, I was using my camera to record the whole experience.

And it was great! As the car took me from the café in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood where I had just finished a meeting to my hotel on West Olympic Boulevard, I marveled at how my nonexistent driver knew exactly when to speed up and slow down, signaled before turning, and smoothly switched lanes. I couldn’t stop staring at the steering wheel, which turned itself with eerie precision.

Back at my hotel, I texted the video to my two sons. “Guess what first-time-ever experience your father just had!”

Micah, my younger son, instantly replied: “That’s so crazy cool!”

My older son Caleb chimed in: “Ah, I wanted to be the first!”

The family tech skeptic had beaten his sons to the future. But here’s what really surprised me: Within a day, I had already stopped marveling at the miracle.

Over the next few rides, I paid closer attention to how the Waymo actually drove.

Approaching an intersection where the light had just turned yellow, the car seemed to hesitate — it touched the brake, then appeared to “change its mind” and sped up just enough to make it through before the light turned red. That felt like a very human judgment call.

On a narrow street where there wasn’t enough room for two cars to pass comfortably, the Waymo slowed down and edged to the right, behaving like the more courteous driver. While I, sitting in the back seat, could see only the car directly in front of me and maybe one lane to the side, the Waymo was detecting far more. As a screen in the back seat showed, the car’s sensors were scanning all four directions at intersections simultaneously, peering over parked vehicles to spot pedestrians or cyclists. Not even the most diligent human driver, constantly checking his side- and rear-view mirrors and looking both ways before turning, can detect everything that the Waymo knows instantly.

Another time, the pickup spot was in a small parking lot behind a Starbucks, and I watched the car execute a perfect three-point turn to position itself for my entry. I noticed too that the cars always came to a full halt at stop signs. Even at intersections where it would have been safe to do what most human drivers do — slow down, but not stop completely — Waymo obeyed the law.

Not everything worked flawlessly. On one ride, the windshield wipers kept running even though there was no rain. On another occasion, I contacted Rider Support to ask what I could do about the front seat being tilted so far back that I could hardly squeeze in behind it. The agent was pleasant and sympathetic but couldn’t find a solution. Only later did I realize there was a legroom adjustment feature on the back-seat screen — the Waymo staffer apparently didn’t know about it.

By my third ride, something had shifted. I found myself looking at my phone and catching up on email — just as if this were an ordinary ride.

Science fiction has always depicted miraculous technology as mundane. Captain Kirk takes the Enterprise’s transporter for granted. The same thing happens in real life. When Samuel Morse sent the first telegraph message in 1844 — “What hath God wrought?” — it must indeed have seemed miraculous. Within a few years, telegraph messages were ubiquitous. Revolutionary becomes routine.

Yet there’s a strong rational case for why this technology should become routine. As my Globe colleague Alan Wirzbicki has noted, human drivers can be shockingly dangerous. They drive drunk. They gawk at accidents. They text behind the wheel. They get drowsy or angry or impatient. They speed. They cut off other drivers.

A Waymo will never do any of those things, and safety statistics bear that out. Waymo reports that its vehicles are 90 percent less likely to be involved in crashes resulting in serious injury than human drivers covering the same distance.

Crew members on Star Trek took the ship’s transporters for granted.

Perfect? No. There have been incidents — confused reactions to construction zones, blocked emergency vehicles, a pet cat run over. But the question isn’t whether autonomous vehicles are flawless. It’s whether they’re safer than the alternative. And the alternative is us.

For centuries, when human beings have been free to innovate and invest, they’ve worked miracles. Those miracles consistently make life better, safer, longer, healthier, more comfortable. And in almost no time at all, those miracles become commonplace.

Maybe the most remarkable thing about Waymo isn’t the technology itself. It’s how quickly even a tech-challenged Boomer like me could go from “incredible!” to casually checking email.

After I returned to Boston, I sent my first-ride video to the “Uncle Jeff needs help” WhatsApp group, along with a message: “Look what Uncle Jeff didn’t need help with!”

Turns out the hardest part of adopting new technology isn’t the technology at all. It’s remembering to stay amazed.