It took a long-put-off trip to California to finally get inside a robotaxi. It was terrific. It helped that I had my 16-year-old along; even alone in the backseat, I would have had a good time. Some people say they will never set foot in a Waymo, as Ellis and I did. I am happy for them, upholding their principles. Me, I am all for it.
Driving all three kids to school in Delaware over many years, I longed for a self-driving car. They got tired of hearing me gripe about it and ribbed me whenever I brought it up during the countless hours spent on the New Jersey Turnpike.
I had had a tiny taste of autonomous vehicles before, an
Waymo, a Google spin-off company, operates in a handful of cities, including San Francisco and Phoenix. My eldest reported that she saw one tooling around Manhattan recently, in test mode, apparently.
Among the first things one notices with Waymos is how very rule-abiding they are. I am that guy who comes to a complete stop at a stop sign. Our car’s goody-two-shoes driving style suited me just fine.
As with nearly everything else about the second quarter of the century, Waymos are tied to an app, so what we gain in convenience, we give up in privacy. Not only does the system know where we are going and where we have been, but because one can connect a Spotify account, it knows our musical taste as well. I went all in, even adjusting the sound settings and seat arrangement in the minutes before our car showed up.
As Ellis and I waited at the suggested spot, I forgot about the Spotify thing. We got in, sat down, and a robotic female voice reminded us of the rules. It (she?) finished and the music came up, playing the last song I had listened to at home.
While making a left, the wheel turning on its own as if handled by a ghost, Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” flowed from hidden speakers. Indeed not, I thought. In fact, it seemed to me that we were sitting in it right then and there. It was worth the 33 bucks we spent for a seven-minute ride.