When David De Clercq went to San Francisco this past year, I had a few obligatory parades on your itinerary: They’re in Alcatraz. Try new restaurants. And I travel in an autonomous car.
The autonomous vehicles, also known as autonomous vehicles or, colloquially, robotaxis, have been circulating on the streets of San Francisco in some form since 2009 and have been operating commercially since last August. The cars also loom as the city’s latest tourist attraction.
De Clercq, 42, who divides his time between New Jersey and Cerdeña, where there are restaurants and coffins and some villas, is an avid traveler.
“I’m excited to explore and do new things,” he says. “I knew I would definitely hitchhike while I was in town.”
What, where and how to conduct
Conversations abound on Reddit and
If you need some basic knowledge when planning your robotaxi trip. First, while audiovisual companies like Cruise and Zoox have proliferated in recent years, Waymo, owned by Alphabet (Google’s parent company), is currently the only company offering rides to the public in San Francisco.
Waymo also operates in the Phoenix metro area, offering trips from Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, and is currently slowly rolling out trips to Los Angeles and testing trips on the San Francisco Peninsula and Austin, Texas. In Phoenix you can hail a Waymo using the Uber app; all other locations require the Waymo app to be downloaded. (The app is very similar to other shared transportation services; the prices are also comparable.) And in many cases all service areas have a hope list to access them.
Anjelica Price-Rocha, Waymo’s public affairs manager, couldn’t provide specific estimates of wait times in various cities, but she says hope is shorter in San Francisco than in Los Angeles. (I signed up for the application in San Francisco in late April and moved up from the hopeful list a little over a week later).
“Whenever you visit San Francisco, I suggest you check out your wish list as soon as you book your trip,” said Ms. Prezzo-Rocha. Are you trying to detect a moving Waymo car? According to Ms. Price-Rocha, the most well-known and popular places include tourist attractions such as the Ferry Building, Muelle 39, Coit Tower and Japantown’s Plaza de la Paz.
A futuristic attraction
Can’t get direct access in time? Try asking friends, family or colleagues if they’ll invite you out for a ride. Jason Karsh, a 38-year-old San Francisco resident who works as a technology marketing executive and consultant, regularly “calls out” Waymo cars and suggests driving them as a tourist activity.
“San Francisco has gotten a bad reputation among visitors recently,” Karsh said. “This reminds us that San Francisco is also a place that lives technologically a few years in the future.”
Waymo vehicles are all-electric Jaguar I-PACEs equipped with radar, lidar, sensors and internal and external cameras. You use the app to unlock the car when it arrives and to listen to music during the journey. Passengers have four seats available: you can sit in the front, but you can’t sit in the driver’s seat (if you try, the car won’t move). A real-life customer support team remotely monitors your ride for unsafe activity and is available if you need assistance.
Mr. Karsh described a recent trip with a group of colleagues: “They immediately took out their phones and started filming, almost as if they were recording a celebrity or a concert.”
In fact, riding in a Waymo can turn you into the main attraction. On a recent trip to San Francisco with my visiting in-laws, we not only filmed much of our trip, but we spotted a group of tourists pointing and staring at our driverless vehicle, even whipping out their phones to take photos.
Mr. De Clercq, visiting from New Jersey, described his trip home after a night out in Chinatown as “very interesting and futuristic. He was extremely cautious and rather slow.
According to the company’s safety data, Waymos are significantly safer than human drivers. That hasn’t prevented a public backlash over AVs: California suspended the operation of Cruise vehicles on the streets of San Francisco after an accident in which a pedestrian was struck and dragged under a vehicle. There were regular reports of Waymo cars blocking traffic and emergency vehicles. The crashes, which largely involved stationary objects, led to a federal investigation into Waymo.
However, in Mr. Karsh’s experience, Waymo rides are sometimes less than smooth because they are too cautious.
“If there’s a car stopped with its hood up on a two-lane road, a human driver will know how to move. A Waymo could just sit there,” she said.
From amazement and joy to almost normality
But perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of my first ride with Waymo is how quickly it feels normal.
“For the first couple of minutes, there’s this dizziness,” Ms. Price-Rocha said. “But we see that, very quickly, people get used to the experience.”
Mr. Karsh saw this change happen firsthand on a recent trip to New York City, when his family opted for a ride in a yellow cab.
“My 3 1/2-year-old son turns to me and my wife and says, ‘Look, Dad, a driver!’ He was a bit shocked.”
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