The Way forward?

But here’s the thing, which I had absolutely not appreciated until I saw it for myself. Waymos drive beautifully. With LIDAR accurate to distances best measured in millimetres, you don’t drive in the middle lane, you drive in the middle of the middle lane; unerringly, with zero discernible deflection to one side or the other. Ever. Only then do you realise how you have an inbuilt hysteresis which just damps out the inevitable gentle side-to-side swaying of only a few centimetres of probably most human drivers. It’s not important so it doesn’t bother you; until you’re in a car that doesn’t do it.

I’d say the way it brakes to a halt was almost poetic if I didn’t want the comments filling up with typically polite and constructive observations that I had finally disappeared up my own fundament. But I’ve been lucky enough to have been driven by a large number of professional drivers, and I’ve probably only ever come across a handful as good as Waymo at feathering the brakes as the car slows, eliminating entirely the rearward lurch in that instant when the car stops and the brakes are released.

Then you start to think of all the things you could do, that you could never do in any other moving car you were not driving: sing at the top of your voice; pick your nose; burp the national anthem; set a new PB for duration of breaking wind; really the possibilities are quite endless. But hate to disappoint as I do, I did none of the above and satisfied myself only with doing what I imagine most people actually do during their first Waymo ride, and sent goofy videos of the event to friends and family.

And then, a proper challenge. We approached a crossroads, halfway across which was a lorry with a vast and low trailer that had become beached on the crest of one of San Francisco’s many hills. There was no other traffic, the way round the lorry and ahead was completely clear; any human driver would just nip around, briefly but safely straying onto the wrong side of the road and continuing their journey. What would the Waymo do? It instead chose to turn left, drive up to the next junction, then do a 360 degree circumnavigation of an entire city block before coming back down the same road we had just gone up, and turning left again back onto the road we wanted to be on all along. It made sense and no sense at the same time. To Waymo, it solved the problem but even if a human driver had decided not to dodge around the lorry, they’d have simply turned onto a parallel street and rejoined some distance the other side of the obstacle.

A few more observations. The famously law-abiding Waymo does speed. At least my one did. It would approach a sign signalling a lower speed limit, but only lift off once the sign had been reached, so technically speeding for that short period of time while the speed was being shed. If it is stuck behind a dawdling car on a two or three lane road, it’s not keen on nipping into the next lane and accelerating past as would you and I. And if it approaches a stop sign with traffic directly ahead, but an empty lane to the left, it won’t promote itself and you to the front of the queue.

Also, Waymos have pedals. It goes without saying you’re not allowed in the driver’s seat, but idiots must have had to try and wrest control from their autonomous expert in the past. I’m sure it’s not possible and I know there are cameras which certain illicit operations will trigger, and I guess the controls are needed for manoeuvring the car around storage and charging facilities. Besides, the I-Pace had them when new and maybe getting rid of them was more trouble than it was worth.

But here is the most surprising thing of all. In the shortest period of time, the sheer apparent impossibility of what is happening before your very eyes evaporates. It is replaced by an absolute certainty that you are in the hands of a master, and what appears to be an infallible one at that, which not even the finest human chauffeur could claim. The near elimination of fore and aft pitch – because it gains speed as smoothly as it sheds it – makes the environment inside incredibly restful. Press a button on a screen in the rear to shove either or both front seats as far forward as they’ll go, and suddenly you have limo levels of legroom. You relax.

For me, a simply appalling passenger, I found this mode of progress utterly persuasive. My normal thought processes: has he seen this? Why did he do that? What’s he going to do next? – were rendered instantly, utterly and quite wonderfully irrelevant. I’d like to say it drove as I would drive but I cannot, because in that environment it simply drove better than would I. I did feel like saying ‘see you on the track, punk’ or less polite words to that effect, but I thought that might be rather childish.

We arrived at the Marriott the best part of an hour after we would have arrived at the airport had I got a taxi, and I then had to order an Uber to take me the last couple of miles to the terminal. So in objective terms, the Waymo ride was completely hopeless, but on this occasion I didn’t care. My five-star-rated Uber driver was really good, a nice chap with whom I exchanged customary introductory pleasantries and then spoke no more, which is just how I like it. But his driving – very good by any normal standard – was not in the same league as the Waymo way.

I am, I am sure, unusually sensitive to such matters so perhaps you should not read too much into it, but I can report only as I find. What I expected to find was a service with unquestionable novelty value but whose wider appeal was not apparent particularly as, at least for now, it appears not to be trying to compete with Uber and the others on price. I thought I’d have an amusing, slightly surreal experience, a small box ticked off the do list and probably not bother with it again. Did I get that wrong. Having checked out journey times in advance – I could have been really caught out by its inability or unwillingness to use the freeway – I’ll use Waymo at every opportunity in future. More, 10 years from now I predict that in most big cities in the US and probably plenty more including some of the UK, autonomous taxis will become the norm, and more traditional methods increasingly the alternative to the main event. Nor are the ramifications for those who depend on driving minicabs to earn their livings lost on me. But for the consumer, so long as it goes where they want, it’s just a better product.

I understand those who are reluctant, who mistrust the idea of putting their lives in the hands of a non-sentient computer system which couldn’t care less not only about you, but about itself either. I felt strangely uneasy about it at first too. Not any more. Waymo or walk? From now on, and where it is an option, that will become my mantra too.