A self-driving car seemed like an outlandish prospect not that long ago. But now in Los Angeles, it’s not surprising to see a vehicle with no one in the front seat on the roadways.
“I think there will be in 10 years as many [robotaxis] as people are willing to pay per ride for. So that could be 100,000 or more cars around Los Angeles county,” says Juan Matute, a researcher at the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies.
But in the present, driverless technology has had its share of critical problems. An accident in San Francisco involving a self-driving car, operated by Cruise, had state agencies questioning the safety of these vehicles.
Since October, the robotaxi company Waymo –– a subsidiary of Alphabet, Google’s parent company –– has been offering a limited number of free driverless rides in Los Angeles. KCRW took one around Century City.
It was undoubtedly jarring to see a steering wheel move by itself, but the ride experience seemed to go without issues. The Waymo drove safely, perhaps almost too safely.
“The vehicles take probably the safest routes that I wouldn't take as a driver because they know they want to minimize the risk,” Matute says.
This was reflected in our ride experience. The Waymo seemed to avoid tricky maneuvers, navigated to calmer streets, and drove so cautiously that it would make a traffic instructor proud.
Waymo advertises its safety potential proudly. On its website, the company says they’ve already reduced traffic injuries compared to human drivers.
“We have a great responsibility to take our rollout very cautiously, because we know that people have a lot of questions. So even though our research is showing that we are already safer than human drivers, we need to earn public trust,” says Ellie Casson, Waymo’s head of city policy and government affairs.
But some skeptics say to take these early safety conclusions with a grain of salt.
“One way to make your company have a good safety record is to have the car be so cautious that it can't get you anywhere in any reasonable amount of time,” says Peter Norton, a transportation researcher at the University of Virginia.
Norton argues that robotaxi companies will face a dilemma as they scale: to make driverless cars as quick and efficient as human drivers, or to make them slow and safe. In his eyes, it’s a dilemma that the companies won’t be able to solve.
“The [driverless] technology just can’t match the skill of a human driver. … Driving requires a kind of inference-making or extrapolation that a robotic car just can’t match,” he says.
But advocates of the technology say it offers a benefit to human driving –– robotaxis won’t get distracted or aggressive.
“[Robotaxis] are just trying to process as much information as it can from what's around it. … It's hard to ask that much of a driver, especially when that driver would rather be on their phone, listening to a podcast, or maybe even doing their makeup,” Matute says.
Critics also question whether driverless cars are worth the investment, especially in Los Angeles, where adding more cars to the roads could worsen traffic congestion.
Norton thinks the money that has been poured into driverless technology –– something to the magnitude of hundreds of billions of dollars –– would’ve been better spent investing in public transit.
“My concern is that we’re pursuing a far-fetched goal that’s very expensive to pursue. And even that, in the best-case scenario, doesn’t yield very much relative to what you can get in a human driven taxi, Uber or Lyft,” he says.
But given Los Angeles’ reliance on cars, adding driverless ones to the city’s transportation infrastructure might be the most feasible option.
“One of the things that I like about [these cars] is that it’s a driving option that has the convenience and comfort of driving. But it's also safer than driving for people outside of the vehicle,” Matute says.
Currently, Waymo is offering its rides in West Hollywood as part of its “Waymo Tour,” and will eventually test its cars in Koreatown and Downtown LA. It’s all a part of the plan to eventually offer a paid service throughout Los Angeles, once Waymo gets regulatory approval from state authorities.
Whether these self-driving cars will have a smooth journey or face bumps on the road to that point is yet to be seen.