Are Waymos Driving More Like Humans?

0:04My colleague Katie Bindley lives in San Francisco. She's a tech reporter and therefore has taken a special joy in observing Waymos, the self-driving robot taxis that are all over the city. I was lucky enough to have Waymos training kind of all around my apartment for a while. And there were a lot of nights when, yeah, I would be driving home or heading somewhere and it would just be me and like four Waymos out on the road. I love how you said I'm lucky enough to be in a neighborhood where Waymo's are trained. Is that really like a stroke of luck? Well, I mean, it was really entertaining. Like I remember one night I was driving home and it was like this extremely foggy, you know, kind of moody night.

0:52And I pulled up at a stoplight next to a Waymo. There were no passengers in it. And all the windows were down and they were blaring the song Creep. Do you guys remember that song? Like, so a creep. Yeah. Yeah.

1:16The car was just listening to TLC? Yeah, having like a chill ride through the neighborhood. No, I do feel lucky because I think it's been fascinating to observe them, to observe how humans feel about them, how we interact with them.

1:35Recently, though, Katie told me she observed a Waymo doing something that caught her by surprise. She was in a car with a few other people one night. They'd rolled up to a four-way stop at about the same time as another car, a Waymo. And I would say, like, it was probably a tie. And typically, in those types of circumstances, if it's a tie, the Waymo would be very deferential and would let you go. or I would wait to see if you were going to go. And in this case, you know, we both pull up and the Waymo was just like, my turn, I'm going. And all of us kind of gasped at the same time. We're like, wow, that was like kind of an, that was kind of like an aggressive Waymo.

2:17And we started talking about how we'd all observed the Waymos, you know, being more assertive and more, you know, every man for himself, I guess. The experience got Katie thinking. Was Waymo's behavior changing? Were San Francisco's polite, deferential robo-taxis driving a little bit more, well, like us? So then I started digging into it to see what was happening.

2:46Welcome to The Journal. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Monday, January 19th. MLK Day. So to close out the holiday weekend, we're bringing you a fun mini-episode.

3:00Coming up on the show, has Waymo gone from way slow to way go?

3:28In Folge 5 von Endstation Insolvenz geht es darum, wie aus einer beinahe Pleite echte Stärke entstehen kann. Jetzt reinhören. Im Podcast-Kanal Gute Geschäfte von Kreditreform. Überall, wo es Podcasts gibt.

3:58A car that no one drives. Look. She recently took him for his first ever Waymo ride. Wait, am I torn? He now refuses to take any other kind of taxi in San Francisco. See? That is amazing, right? But even Waymo fans would admit, Waymos aren't exactly known for their speed. I mean, I remember driving behind them again in the early days and being like, oh God, I'm behind a Waymo. This is so annoying because they were so careful and slow. And you'd be like, come on Waymo, I'm in a hurry. How did you see that out on the roads? Like what would they do? Like not just stopping at a stop sign, but like a kind of a longer stop than you might feel necessary, especially if you're in a hurry.

4:51Or I know they would not necessarily like go around a stopped Uber or a delivery truck. They'd like wait. Yeah. Okay, guys, so we're blocked by a semi. Let's see what Waymo does. This is a common gripe against Waymo on social media. Come on, Waymo, you can do it. Or can you do it?

5:17This has been Waymo's reputation. Passive, cautious, perhaps to a fault. But after that moment at the four-way stop, Katie began asking around to see if other people were seeing Waymos be bolder. One person she talked to was Sophia Yen, a healthcare company founder in San Francisco. I would say it's driving more like a taxi driver, an aggressive, you know, New York taxi driver. Okay. Recently, Sophia told Katie she saw two Waymos doing something that caught her off guard. I was behind two of them in my own car in San Francisco. And you know that tunnel that runs through Chinatown? Yeah. I had never seen anyone switch lanes in that tunnel.

6:02And there were two Waymo and me behind driving very, very quickly. And then they switched lanes in front of me. And I was like, I hope they know where the other one is at all times. Another person told Katie he'd noticed Waymo's being more assertive with pedestrians. starting to drive before people had fully exited the crosswalk. And then there's the matter of the so-called California stop. It is when you pull up to a stop sign and the car does not come to a complete stop. It slows down kind of to a crawl and the person like looks both ways and then they just go. That's the kind of thing that would get you some demerits if you were taking a driving test, for sure.

6:44I wonder if it would in San Francisco, because I feel like it is very widely accepted as a thing you do. Now, some people claim they've seen Waymo's do it, too. Waymo says its cars are designed to come to a full stop.

7:01So you had all these stories that people were telling you. You saw things yourself with regards to Waymo. In your reporting journey, what did you do next? Well, I had to ask Waymo what was going on. Katie reached out to Waymo, which, by the way, is owned by Alphabet, Google's parent company. That's how she ended up on a call with Chris Ludwig, a senior director of product management at Waymo. Her question for Ludwig, was this really happening? Were Waymos driving more like humans? Ludwig was unequivocal. He was like, yeah, we have been trying to make the cars more confidently assertive, as he put it, for a while now.

7:39It's a strategy. So Waymo is tweaking the cars to be more assertive. Like the company is changing Waymo's behavior? They do regular software updates. Okay. So this is something that's been happening over time. I mean, he described it as, you know, just kind of necessary in order to scale them up in San Francisco. It's a busy city. You've got tons of cars on the road. When the Waymos are too passive, it becomes disruptive to the rest of traffic. So, you know, there's reasons to make them more confident. So it's not like there are these, like, rogue Waymos just picking up the California rolling stuff on their own.

8:19No. Okay. I don't think so, no. Waymo says its cars are safe. A company spokeswoman said Waymos have logged 100 million driverless miles in San Francisco and other major cities. And Waymo's reported that compared with human drivers, it's had 91 % fewer crashes involving a serious injury or worse. Ludwig wouldn't comment on specific incidents of Waymo misbehavior. But he emphasized that while Waymo's are designed to make common-sense decisions, they're also designed to respect traffic laws. Still, Katie says, that doesn't always happen. San Bruno police pulled over a Waymo car with no driver Friday night while conducting a DUI crackdown.

9:04Last year, two California cops pulled over a Waymo. Police say the car made an illegal U-turn right in front of them. And it raised an interesting question. How do you ticket a car with no driver? Katie talked to one of the cops. The funny thing is he said that he and his partner had just been talking about hearing about how Waymos were getting more assertive. And then he said they saw it pull the U-E and then they looked up and they saw the no U-turn sign. So they put their lights on and pulled over the Waymo and the windows rolled down. And yes, there was no human in the front, but an operator did come on the speaker and profusely apologize.

9:46And they can't write them tickets yet. That is coming. So yeah, no tickets issued. It's kind of unfair, isn't it? I mean, you know, now that you mention it. Yeah, although I will, I've talked to myself, lot of a few tickets, so I guess I can't complain. I mean, does this mean our robot cars are getting their training wheels off? I think they're growing up, you know? They're maturing. Our innocent little robot cars are evolving. Yes, our baby robot cars are coming into their own.

10:29That's all for today, Monday, January 19th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow with a regular episode.