By TOM ADLER
Guest Columnist
A couple months ago my wife and I were leaving the Warriors game in San Francisco, and we decided to catch a ride in a driverless car to the Sunset (district) to pick up our kids.
The Background
About 10 years ago while living in the Mission (district) I saw the first driverless car. At the time they were ugly. Usually with lots of protruding sensors and whirling gyroscopes on the roof and ALWAYS with a driver behind the wheel. At the time there was a lot of excitement about the future and how it was already here.
As all things do, everything changed. The startups behind the driverless cars were quickly bought or funded by the major car manufacturers in Detroit or the Computer Giants in Silicon Valley. The cars became much sleeker. They also became ubiquitous. On every corner there were different competing cars from Cruise (General Motors), Waymo (Google), Zoox (Amazon). All were racing to map the city and perfect the LIDAR computer vision on the cars. Sometimes these cars would drive in pelotons to gather data, which clogged an already congested city street. Most importantly the cars ditched their humans and truly became driverless.
The novelty wore off. Then, these marvels started causing problems. There were stories of driverless cars blocking fire hydrants during fires and firefighters taking the most brutal path through the car to serve as a warning to the car companies.
There were stories of cars running red lights or hitting someone and the cops not sure how to give a driverless car a ticket.
Most recently people of San Francisco shared online that if you took an orange traffic cone and placed it upon the hood of the driverless car it would render the car useless. Like flipping a turtle on its back, it just couldn’t figure out how to right itself.
This was the state of things as I asked my wife if she would hop in the driverless car with me. There were some eyes rolling but she knew how much I love stuff like this. So, away we went.
The Ride
I downloaded the app and put in the code for a free ride. We sat at a nearby restaurant and had a drink as we waited for our vehicle. Our car was named Poppy. You look at the map on your phone as the car got closer. The car pulled up and we discovered the hardest part of the journey was getting in. We started to move and the car moved as well. Doing a little dance as the car jerked forward each time we reached for the door. We ended up getting in about halfway through an intersection, which was dangerous and probably user error on our part.
Once in, you are greeted with a safety video on the screen in the back of the headrest. Cruise currently only lets passengers in the back seat, where Waymo allows someone to sit shotgun. From the backseat you can change the radio and probably more importantly call for help via OnStar (since this is a GM vehicle).
It was raining, the streets were crowded, and our first true test came when a skateboarder zipped by us on the left-hand side. The car saw it before any human could have, slowed down, and prepared for the skateboarder. It was business as usual for the car, but my wife and I were still freaking out at this point of the ride. We took video of the first 10 minutes of the ride and you can hear us marveling at every aspect of the experience … until the novelty wore off and we accepted the new reality. Just like you might not think twice when hitting an elevator button instead of having a “driver” in the elevator. You just trust it will take you where you need to go.
Then as we were crossing 19th Avenue in the Outer Sunset, our little car came upon an accident. While we thankfully were not involved in the accident, we were stuck because of it. The car’s brain couldn’t figure out how to safely maneuver around the accident so its directive was to stay put, which made the whole scene worse backing up traffic behind us and motivating others to operate outside of the painted lines which could have caused another car crash. After a few painfully long minutes someone from OnStar called us in the car to check and see how we were doing, and about as soon as that happened someone from somewhere took control of the car remotely and got the ship back on course.
Five minutes later we were getting out and greeting our kids.
The biggest take away from the journey was how fast it felt like any other taxi ride we had taken in the city in the last 10 years. At some point we trusted the car and the software and we were just taking a normal drive home. I can’t imagine how much easier it would be to perfect this tool in the grid and spoke system that Indianapolis is laid out in instead of the hills and curves of San Francisco.
Why tell you this now? Driverless cars are one of the ways AI is going to revolutionize our understanding of the world. You can’t fight it, and if you think about it you probably don’t want to. For example, how many of you churn your own butter, ride your horse to work, or write letters to a spouse when you need them to pick something up from the store? You could. No one is stopping you, but you don’t because you don’t have to.
Ten years from now, you’ll schedule a car for grandma to go get her groceries in town, and you may receive your packages from an autonomous truck. The world will keep on spinning … but your wife may still roll her eyes at you.