Along for the Ride, With No One Behind the Wheel

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Three New York Times technology reporters recently buckled up for a ride in Waymo’s autonomous vehicles.

By Tripp Mickle, Mike Isaac and Yiwen Lu

On Aug. 21, Waymo, a self-driving car company owned by Alphabet, Google’s parent company, began letting people pay for rides in its driverless Jaguar cars in San Francisco.

The New York Times dispatched three technology reporters to test the service. After a brief battle with the door, Tripp Mickle successfully climbed into his Waymo car in Alamo Square. Yiwen Lu hailed her ride from a parking lot at the Marina Green. And Mike Isaac started his route near Mission Dolores Basilica. The three planned to meet at the Beach Chalet restaurant in Golden Gate Park.

They wrote about their experiences in the cars for a recent article. Below, each reporter shares more about their time in the passenger’s seat.

Tripp Mickle’s ride began with a ‘lesson in humility.’

In San Francisco, Waymo vehicles have become as ubiquitous as the city’s famous cable cars. For locals, the cars’ pervasiveness has killed their novelty. But when Waymo launched its taxi service last week, the novelty was back.

My first ride began with a lesson in humility. I watched a Waymo car come to a stop in front of a row of colorful Victorian houses known as the Painted Ladies. Alongside a whirring sensor above the car, a screen displayed my initials: T.M. I reached for the door handle only to find it flush against the passenger side of the car. I pressed a button, but the door wouldn’t pop open. I pulled. Nothing. I pushed. Nothing. I glared at the empty car.

“How do you get into this thing?” I asked Andri Tambunan, the photographer who was with me.

I reached for my phone in hopes of finding a guide on Waymo’s One app. Instead, I found a button that read, “Unlock.” I pressed it, and the door handles popped out. “Hello, Tripp,” a disembodied voice said when I climbed in. And off we went.

When the car approached a dump truck that was blocking traffic, I wondered if it would barrel into the truck or come to a stop. Instead, it slowed down, put on the turn signal and slid into the adjacent lane. The wheel twisted with ghostly precision.

The car never exceeded the speed limit, and it came to a full stop at every intersection. It was so exacting that I eventually lost interest. By the time I reached my destination, I had come to realize that the most difficult thing about riding in a robot taxi may be unlocking its doors.

The car made a move that Mike Isaac, ‘a paranoid rule follower,’ would have made.

I stood outside the Mission Dolores Basilica and ordered my Waymo car. The app told me it would be a seven-minute wait, which was not much longer than I usually wait for an Uber.

Almost exactly seven minutes later, my car showed up and parked in a legal zone across the street. This was a welcome change, as I’m used to ride-share drivers pulling over in bike lanes, prompting dirty looks from cyclists.

I got in. The car didn’t have any dirt, garbage or worse from previous passengers. It beeped at me to put on my seatbelt. Safety first!

The car was a bit faster off the starting line than I had anticipated. Maybe it’s because I drive like a paranoid rule follower, but I was surprised at how quickly we took off.

I was impressed when the car recognized two illegally parked trucks blocking one side of Broderick Street, and switched over into the left lane to move around them, following two human-driven cars. It’s what I would have done.

I wish it had been easier to use my phone to play music in the car. I like the idea of blasting songs without worrying about upsetting the driver, so I tried to crank one of my favorite punk bands at full volume. But to do so, I had to download a different app.

When we arrived at my destination, it somehow took about three minutes to “find a space to pull over” in the empty parking lot. Once we parked, I got out and the app bid me farewell before the car hopped back on the Great Highway, on to its next fare. In all: Not too bad for my first unmanned ride.

Yiwen Lu had a ‘gazillion questions,’ but a smooth journey.

I hailed a Waymo ride from the parking lot of the Marina Green park. As I watched the dot moving on my phone screen, signaling the Waymo car approaching, I wondered: How would a driverless car find me if I were lost? Luckily, Jason Henry, a photographer, and I were able to identify the black-and-white car from afar.

That was only one of the gazillion questions I had about driverless cars. I have been following the regulation of autonomous vehicles in California since before the state voted for their expansion. During interviews with city officials, advocates and technologists, I’ve heard many different opinions about the technology: Some applauded the cars as the future of transportation, while others said that the technology was far from mature.

After leaving the parking lot, the car took a nearby residential street instead of going on the main road. It wasn’t until it got back onto the main street that we saw there had been an accident, which the Waymo car circumvented. A Waymo representative later told us that the vehicle did not receive real-time updates about accidents; it navigated the scene through its light detection technology.

The technology has greatly improved since Waymo introduced it, researchers told me. But people will continue asking questions, especially emergency medical workers who have experienced cases of driverless cars interfering with emergency vehicles. (Cruise, another driverless car company that offers paid rides, recently agreed to cut its San Francisco fleet in half after a collision there with a fire truck.) It will be years until the regulatory debate settles.

As a passenger, the ride was full of excitement and some doubt. Plus, a bit of celebrity fanfare: In an autonomous car, people take pictures of you — or, rather, the empty driver’s seat.

Tripp Mickle covers technology from San Francisco, including Apple and other companies. Previously, he spent eight years at The Wall Street Journal reporting on Apple, Google, bourbon and beer. More about Tripp Mickle

Mike Isaac is a technology correspondent and the author of “Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber,” a best-selling book on the dramatic rise and fall of the ride-hailing company. He regularly covers Facebook and Silicon Valley, and is based in San Francisco. More about Mike Isaac

Yiwen Lu is a technology reporting fellow based in San Francisco. More about Yiwen Lu

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