Self-driving cars seem to be taking over the streets of Los Angeles as Waymo continues to expand throughout the county, including in Santa Monica, West Hollywood, and Culver City.
More than 150,000 people signed up for the waitlist this past March for a chance to catch one of the autonomous rides, according to Waymo. The app is still invite only, so you’ll need to secure a special code from the company to cut in line. Otherwise, you’ll be notified when they’re ready to welcome new riders.
According to Waymo, the cars have more than 20 billion miles of simulated driving experience, using detailed custom maps and its advanced suite of sensors to get you to your destination. But there are reports noting the self-driving cars sometimes run into issues with unprotected left turns and rain-soaked roads.
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So is the unique, futuristic concept all it's cracked up to be? Well, my colleague Kevin Tidmarsh and I put it to the test — the good, the bad, and the ugly.
The set-up
We teamed up to go roundtrip from downtown L.A. to Koreatown using Waymo. The idea was to give the cars relatively challenging routes full of potential obstacles — one-way streets, unprotected lefts and all, right during rush hour.
The first ride was called shortly after 3 p.m. on a Friday from South Spring Street to Hobart Boulevard. The Waymo took about 17 minutes to arrive and cost us just under $20. That was about the same price as other rideshare options, but a much longer wait.
We jumped in the second ride back to downtown shortly after 4 p.m. This one took five minutes to arrive, mostly because it was the exact same car, and also cost us about $20. That was about $6 cheaper than Uber or Lyft.
The positives
Both the pick-ups and drop offs were convenient, the cars and us were able to find each other — in both cases at mostly empty public parking lots. For our first ride, that meant we had to walk a bit farther than originally intended, but the car accounted for the distance and gave us a few extra minutes to get there.
The door handles are only accessible after you hit an unlock button in the app, which can be a bit confusing for first-time riders, but is helpful from a safety standpoint.
Now, the car was quite nice. It was spotless, there were two easily accessible charging ports, a pair of screens in the back and front, as well as several curated playlists to choose from for the roughly 15 minute ride.
Waymo uses a fleet of Jaguar electric cars, so yes, compared to my hand-me-down Honda CR-V, it’s a big upgrade.
A robotic voice welcomed us as we slid in the seats, and Kevin, my partner in crime, said it “smells like a Macy’s.” The crisp, clean, and noticeably inoffensive business casual clothes section though, not the mid-priced perfume department.
While the driving wasn’t always so smooth (we’ll get to this, trust me) there were a few notable positives.
The Waymo always used its blinker, which is better than some drivers in the city.
It also stopped slowly and gently at most stop lights, leaving an appropriate amount of space between us and the crosswalk.
The screens mapped every single vehicle, scooter, bike, and person in the car’s immediate vicinity, tracking them like little video game characters so we knew what was going on around us.
It was very responsive to obstacles, almost too responsive, and it would regularly readjust the wheel to avoid anything even remotely in our way, making for an occasionally rough ride.
The negatives
The car was comfortable, but the driving didn’t start out strong. Let’s just say it did things the DMV wouldn’t want a human driver to do.
As we were leaving the downtown L.A. area, we almost immediately ran a stop light. To the car’s credit, it was yellow when we entered the intersection, but it clearly didn’t intend to slow down or stop. It also didn’t speed up from our consistent 25 mph cruise to try and beat the yellow.
“It was, like, barely legal, if it was legal,” Kevin said as we passed.
“That definitely felt ticket worthy,” I replied.
While Waymo did use its blinker, we noticed that it sometimes was signaling in the wrong direction. The car also seemed to prefer to change lanes in the middle of an intersection, which isn’t illegal, but also isn’t recommended.
It regularly drove in dedicated bus lanes and struggled to respond to someone attempting to parallel park, inching closer and closer to the car while they tried to reverse into the spot. It also casually drove down the middle of two lanes at one point.
Again, the car was responsive to potential obstacles, which meant we had some jarring and sudden stops along the way. If a pedestrian stepped into the street on the opposite end of traffic, or a mail delivery vehicle was parked slightly in the lane, the Waymo seemed to slam on the brakes.
And it did feel a little strange to be in the backseat of a car that so many people were staring at. We got enthusiastic waves from small children and many lingering looks from people around us. But we’ll never really know whether they were annoyed with, or amused by, the self-driving set-up.
Final thoughts
Overall, although the driving was occasionally questionable, it did feel safe.
Neither of us felt completely at ease during the first trip, analyzing the Waymo’s every move for signs of trouble.
“I’m watching every car that passes with bated breath, just like how is it going to handle it,” Kevin said. “To be honest, sometimes it handles it well, sometimes it doesn’t.”
“I’m watching more intently than I would if it was a human driver,” I said. “Part of it is curiosity, but part of it is [being] scared.”
But we calmed down by the second round, at least enough to enjoy a Sabrina Carpenter song on the pop preset station (the driverless cars are great for karaoke with EDM, Disney hits, and Bollywood stations — here’s an idea for another late-night talk show segment).
Our verdict: We’d consider calling one of the self-driving cars if we weren’t in a rush to get home and they continued to be a cheaper option. But a share of your payment (plus tips) won’t be going to human drivers, as with most ride-hailing apps.
“There were a couple points that were a little bit hairy,” Kevin said. “There were some decisions it made that I wouldn’t have made as a driver … but there were lots of parts of the experience that definitely did make me feel comfortable.”
However, there’s a notable knock against the service now — Waymo doesn’t have as many cars on the road as other rideshare options, and its routes are limited to nearly 80 square miles of L.A. County.
At least we know our fears were mostly unfounded, Waymo can handle one-way streets or unprotected left turns pretty dang well.
