Column: Self-driving Waymo cars could make traffic worse in Los Angeles

For some reason (no one seems to know exactly why) self-driving cars can't stay off a random sleepy block in Santa Monica.

You can see for yourself: grab a cup of coffee at Primo Passo at 7th and Montana and take a seat. In a short time they will pass one after another: Waymo's autonomous taxis, white Electric Jaguar SUVs with a bulbous sensing apparatus turning upwards. I sat in the corner for less than an hour and counted at least 10 laps without a driver.

“I'm here every morning and they pass by. All day, They’re happening,” says Jennifer, a film producer and local resident, who asked me not to use her last name. “It's common here,” she adds. “It would be nice to know why.”

While we chat, another stops at the light. I run up and ask the safety driver behind the wheel (behind but not touching it) why they are driving around the block. “There is no specified route,” he says, smiling as the car takes off. Five minutes later, another one arrived.

Waymo's self-driving cars He arrived in Los Angeles last fall.. They are still in trial mode and each have a safety driver while the company awaits approval to operate commercially. It is the third major market that Google's sister company has entered, after phoenixwhere consumers can now summon autonomous vehicles using the Waymo One app, and his home territory of San Franciscowhere test vehicles now operate truly driverless.

According to the company, there are only a few dozen Waymo robotaxis in the Los Angeles area right now, in places like Santa Monica, Koreatown and Miracle Mile. Few cities will be as affected by autonomous vehicles as Los Angeles, home to endless congestion and two-hour commutes, where the expression “traffic” and a shrug of the shoulders can exempt you from any tardiness, and where the same horrible photo of congested thanksgiving traffic on the 405 It goes viral every year because it never stops being true.

And of course, Waymo is licking its lips at the prospect of cashing in on all that: Not only is Los Angeles a much bigger city than Phoenix or San Francisco, but there's a sense that if you can handle the traffic here, you can handle it anywhere. any place; At least in the western United States, it is the ultimate boss of urban car culture.

What would it mean for passengers, drivers and the city as a whole if the company were successful? What if robotaxis became reliable and affordable and replaced taxis and Lyft? On Valentine's Day, I boarded one of those traveling Waymo Jaguars to find out: a date with autonomous vehicle destiny, if you will.

I meet Sandy Karp, Waymo communications manager, and Vishay Nihalani, project manager, at Virginia Avenue Park. The day is crisp and clear, ideal conditions for sensors designed to map and navigate an environment in real time.

Karp calls the car with a tap of his phone, and before long, an SUV arrives with his initials illuminated on a screen on the roof. The cylindrical apparatus also contains Waymo's key technologies: A lidar (short for light detection and ranging) sensor along with an integrated long-range camera and radar. Combined, the set of sensors, computers and software is called the Waymo controller; The idea is that the technology is modular and attachable to other vehicles as well.

We get in, say hello to Lindsay Arlar, the autonomy specialist in the driver's seat, and the self-driving Jaguar easily takes us to Virginia Avenue. The car moves steadily and safely, somehow feeling exactly as it is: the precise average of a driving experience determined by software trained on data from millions of miles.

The prospect of complementing that data is one of the advantages of expanding to Los Angeles. “There are 13 million people here, with a diverse user base,” says Nihalani. “We have some people who commute, some who go to the beach on the weekend on the other side of town, there's obviously a vibrant nightlife.”

As we speak, the driver handles traffic stops smoothly, slowing down for a construction site and maneuvering around the admittedly minor obstacles we encounter on Santa Monica's relatively wide and clean streets. He makes human-like decisions, such as turning wide to avoid some debris near the sidewalk when there is no oncoming traffic.

Nihalani does not give me any concrete information about the obstacles he has not overcome so well. It is worth noting that last year, a report from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration showed that Waymo was involved in the most traffic accidents of any automated driving system; 62 accidents from July 2021 to May 2022.

Nihalani says one of the biggest challenges is operating in areas where people tend to ignore the speed limit: Waymo vehicles don't accelerate, so the driver will go 35 miles per hour while traffic passes at 50. The same goes for with the infamous left turn on red; It's technically illegal, so Waymos won't do it. But the line of drivers behind you will make you suffer if you don't take it.

Drivers are more aggressive here, Arlar says: If the Waymo car goes too slow, they'll just turn around. “People have rear-ended us, you know,” Nihalani says.

It's hard to have that “oh man, a robot is driving me” feeling when the car is full of Waymo employees. In fact, the most stressful part of the experience may have been the intensity with which the autonomous specialist in the driver's seat placed her hands on the steering wheel, giving the driver the impression that things could go wrong at any moment, even though You never do.

The feeling of being over-supervised is compounded when the disembodied voice of someone named Scott enters the cabin to make sure we're following the rules. “I'm calling to remind everyone that the policy states that only three passengers are allowed in a Waymo,” he says. It turns out that Scott's team performs “passenger checks,” monitoring the interior of Waymo vehicles via video from an office in Arizona. No one had told him that my traveling companions were Waymo employees.

After half an hour, having completed the tour, we disembark. The Driver system did not disengage at any time, suggesting that the trip went as smoothly as possible.

In any case, maybe it was a little also without problems, which led me to imagine a world where autonomous and calm movements are the norm. In a city that already requires too much car travel, what happens when you make getting around by car much less demanding?

“That really worries me,” says David Zipper, a mobility expert and visiting fellow at Harvard Kennedy School. “If it works and grows, what effect will it have on a city like Los Angeles?”

Zipper points to a theory called Jevons' Paradox, which says that making something easier or more abundant induces people to consume more. “If you apply that to self-driving technology, these things are designed to make driving easier, and as humans, we will respond by driving more. “That means more vehicle miles traveled, more sprawl as people become more tolerant of longer car trips, and more impact on the environment.”

That's not to mention the potential impact on taxi and ride-sharing jobs: there are more than 100,000 vehicles registered with Uber and Lyft in Los Angeles and 2,364 taxisand the idea that many workers will have to face well-funded freelance competitors is not a pleasant one.

Zipper is also concerned that the adoption of shiny new technological solutions, such as self-driving cars, perhaps like former Mayor Eric Garcetti's adoption of Waymo, will undermine efforts to improve less glamorous but more affordable and sustainable modes of transportation. .

Politicians discuss ambitious, tech-intensive transportation solutions, such as ride-hailing apps or the giant underground tunnels Elon Musk is preaching and believes he has found a magic solution, or at least something interesting he can sell to voters. They end up diverting resources, attention and legislative will from things like buses and subway lines, things that work, that LA is desperate forand that would work much better if it were properly funded and executed.

More to the point, driverless cars could worsen what is already the bane of every Angeleno's existence. “I mean, my God, you think you have congestion now,” says Zipper, “think about traffic when everyone is in the back seat of a driverless car.”

Me too was Thinking about the traffic as another Waymo passed the coffee shop, maybe number 7 or 8 on the hour, in Santa Monica. The scene reminded me of a story about Waymo cars that inexplicably drive to a residential cul-de-sac in San Francisco; Residents had no idea what was going on, except that it boded poorly for the future of local traffic.

So far, the cars don't seem to have bothered locals, although everyone I spoke to had noted their sudden prevalence in the area. “As long as there's someone behind the wheel in case it goes crazy,” says David Shoucair, an architectural designer. “I've seen enough videos of that to see that this technology is still far away.” At a time when self-driving competitor Tesla just announced the recall of hundreds of thousands of cars with so-called full self-driving software, that seemed the prevailing attitude. “It still scares me. “When I see that car on the street and there’s no one in it,” Jennifer says, “it might scare me.”

While the security concern is real, my fears are more aligned with Zipper's. It's not so much that they don't work as well as they should but what happens if they do. Is this really the future we want? More luxury SUVs on the already busy streets of Los Angeles, struggling to adapt to organic traffic patterns, with single passengers in the back seat, watched on video by contract workers in Arizona while we tap away on our phones, alone?