Calling a car through an app, after having entered the destination and knowing the price of the trip, is now commonplace. But in San Francisco, where I was recently reporting, the experience is different if the app is Waymo. In this case, the car arrives alone, and the journey is made without a driver. I tried it on the first day. Driving was safe, very respectful of traffic rules and full of caution. And I used it again days later, this second time more relaxed, and I even selected it in the car system, like ambient music, San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair), sung by Scott McKenzie. A classic, but I understand that there are those who say it was a cliché. Like getting into a taxi in Lisbon and asking for the song to be Lisboa Menina e Moça, by Carlos do Carmo.
On Saturday, there was a kind of blackout in San Francisco. And Waymo’s cars – white Jaguars – had a hard time dealing with an almost widespread situation of non-working traffic lights. Many stopped, quite simply, but with all four indicators on. And these stuck cars contributed to further gridlocking traffic in the Californian city. There are videos of drivers zigzagging to get around autonomous vehicles momentarily stopped on the street. THE San Francisco Chronicle he even made a title asking about Waymo’s ability to respond during an earthquake.
In a statement, Waymo, which belongs to Alphabet, the company that owns Google, explained that autonomous cars, robotaxis in English, they are programmed to deal with a breakdown in the traffic lights as if it were an intersection with four STOP signs, but this time, the dysfunction was so great in the city’s traffic lights that the cars had to stop for some time.
Waymo is present throughout the San Francisco Bay region, and also in other American cities, such as Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin and Atlanta. And there are plans to start activities in Washington and even London. In the British capital, Uber and Lyft are also considering a partnership with Baidu to introduce robotaxis of Chinese technology, wrote the daily The Guardian on Monday.
If a Google search is carried out, there are reports of incidents with autonomous cars, but also statistics that seek to prove their reliability in comparative terms with human driving. The future of the business depends on gaining the trust of users, but the truth, I can testify from my personal experience, is that even those who don’t dare enter a robotaxi You already have to deal with them when you drive on the streets of San Francisco and, if you’re walking, you have to trust that they respect the crosswalks.
Waymo announced that it would have made more than 14 million trips in 2025, triple the number of trips in 2024. Of those 14 million, two were mine. I don’t think I will be afraid of a third time, or a fourth, even knowing the problems that occurred during the blackout in San Francisco (Elon Musk said that, on the contrary, the robotaxis Tesla, in tests, behaved well), but it is a relationship of trust that is very personal and whose development depends on autonomous cars improving safety (there are several projects competing, including Zoox, from Amazon). Its future depends on both the evolution of technology and the legal framework and it is very likely that not all countries or cities will be open to the experience. But one day maybe we can hop on a Waymo (or similar) and, pardon the cliché, head along Avenida da Liberdade listening to Amália singing Maria Lisboa.
Deputy Director of Diário de Notícias