I wanted to love driverless taxis, but then my journey took a horrifying turn

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For the past two weeks, I’ve been traveling around San Francisco in driverless taxis, the way they can navigate busy streets with such ease. If you come to visit me in the city, there is a high probability that I will ask you to come for a walk with me. That was until I got into a car that had broken down, stalled and didn’t immediately open its doors.

There is a saying in technology that if you are not paying for a product, you are the product. In the case of driverless cars, you are not the product, you are the guinea pig. San Francisco is being used as a living laboratory. What started with a few vehicles circling Golden Gate Park with security drivers has expanded to hundreds of completely empty vehicles in several neighborhoods this year. If the companies have their way then more are coming.

Waymo, owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, and Cruise from General Motors both want to offer 24-hour taxi services.

For now, permissions are limited. Waymo cannot charge for the ride. There may be a cruise charge but only at night in some parts of the city. The vote has been postponed until mid-July to consider Waymo’s request to charge fares and Cruise’s application to run daytime service.

San Francisco’s acceptance of driverless cars seems to contrast with the city’s attitude toward other efforts to boost transportation. For example, in 2018, it banned electric scooter companies from operating without permits. This has prevented rideshare companies from operating on parts of Central Market Street.

So why is the city so welcoming to driverless cars? This shows that the city has no right to say much on the matter. The companies got the go-ahead from the state California Public Utilities Commission and Department of Motor Vehicles.

Some city agencies are very unhappy with the situation. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which oversees road transportation, has called for slowing the rollout. Deputy spokesman Stephen Chun said the city supports the technology but is concerned about the increase in traffic incidents. “We are excited to be the test city but it is still in development,” he added. “We’re not killing technology, we’re requesting incremental expansion.”

So far, traffic incidents have been more annoying than worrying. For example, there have been reports of driverless cars blocking lanes. A cruise car swerved into the firefighters’ path. But there has been no specific reaction from the residents. Both Cruise and Waymo have long waiting lists. Although, of course, the passengers who signed up are not the only ones participating in this experiment. Pedestrians, cyclists and other drivers are also involved, whether they realize it or not.

I thought about it when I was trying to cross a street where an empty Waymo car was parked in the middle of a pedestrian crossing. There was no driver to make eye contact with, so I didn’t know if the car would stay still or try to roll backwards. Finally, I decided to stay away from him until he went away.

Waymo says that if I walked behind the car at that crossing, it would have realized I was there and stayed stationary. Collision avoidance is the guiding principle of the car. If it is safe to sit at a pedestrian crossing, he will do so. It also states that the cars have gesture perception, which means they are capable of following instructions from someone telling them to stop or waving them forward.

I had planned to end this column with an enthusiastic endorsement for Robotaxis. Their ability to sense and avoid obstacles through radar, lidar and cameras is impressive. They don’t speed up, they stop at crossings and slow down for pedestrians. Eliminating human error will undoubtedly make roads safer.

Then that last ride came. Late Thursday evening, I called a driverless cruise car to pick up a friend who’d never been in one before and spent the entire evening listening to me. After traveling for a few minutes, the car suddenly changed its course. What should have taken six minutes is now showing as 24. It then tried to switch from one lane to the other before stopping, the indicator started flashing. A line of cars behind us honked but the car didn’t budge. Realizing that there was nothing we could do, we tried to end the journey but the doors remained locked.

It was only for a few seconds. But those few seconds were long enough to miss the high risks involved in technology that is still in development. Cruise points to his safety record and 2 million miles of travel without serious injury or death. But it will be a while before I get back in a car with no driver behind the wheel.

elaine.moore@ft.com