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I was 10 minutes into my first trip in a driverless car when I realised my vehicle was potentially obstructing the president of the United States.
Late for a press conference on the sidelines of the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, I called one of the autonomous Waymos that I had seen gliding past my hotel. At first, the climate-controlled Jaguar purred serenely through the downtown traffic. Then, in the midst of a fast-flowing six-lane avenue, it came to an abrupt halt. The problem, it became apparent, was that police officers in the intersection ahead were diverting cars — with vigorous arm signals — to the right. My autonomous chauffeur was refusing to obey.
“Tell the Waymo it needs to go to the right,” bellowed the officer who stood in front of me. I was not sure to whom, or to what, I could communicate this, but sheepishly relayed his command out loud inside the car. There was no response. The Waymo kept pumping out soft jazz, indifferent to my appeals.
Unpanicked, I pressed the “call support” button on the display, assuming it would be answered in real time. The phone rang for what seemed like an eternity, with the officers in front of me growing more irate by the second. One further back suggested to her colleague that the Waymo was not budging because he was standing directly in front of it. He moved, but the car did not, presumably determined not to disobey the traffic lights, which had turned red.
By now, my Waymo was the lone civilian vehicle on the road and it dawned on me that the officers’ urgency might be due to the imminent arrival of a motorcade containing the convention’s headline act, Donald Trump, or a member of his cabinet. This was soon confirmed by the arrival of a Secret Service agent, wearing a black suit and a darker expression. “I need this vehicle to be out of here NOW, or it will be crushed,” he barked through the closed passenger window, strongly implying that I was somehow to blame.
At this point, the support line was answered by a distinctly unhurried voice who suggested moving everyone 10ft away from the perimeter of the car — a suggestion that the US Secret Service did not take kindly to. In any event, it made no difference.
I had seen enough. Against the advice of my remote interlocutor, I unbuckled my seatbelt, pushed the passenger door open, and fled into the 38C Dallas heat. Behind me, the agents continued to remonstrate with the recalcitrant vehicle. I looked back one last time to see the car, flanked by officers, finally start to crawl forward with its hazard lights on.
After making it to the conference centre, this time with an Uber under human control, I received a call from a Waymo representative. It was, they said, “not really the experience that we wanted you to have”.
The company’s press office later provided a more fulsome account of what went wrong. Apparently, the car had recognised and understood the officers’ hand gestures, but because the diversion required turning right across multiple lanes of traffic, it was programmed to wait for remote assistance. Said assistance was activated within seven seconds but was escalated to a team that deals with emergency personnel — hence the delay.
It’s not clear how often Waymo is involved in stand-offs with the Secret Service, but its safety record is significantly better than human drivers. The cars are active in more than 15 major US cities and, while it has filed over 1,000 incident reports with regulators, most of them are minor scrapes.
“We continually refine our technology’s performance to more seamlessly handle these types of scenarios,” a Waymo spokesperson said of my experience. “And we’ll continue to improve ahead of operating in environments where these situations are more common.”
Looking up Waymo’s expansion plans, I learnt one of its next targets is my home city, Washington DC, where impromptu diversions for passing VIPs are indeed “more common”. The company might want to consider fine-tuning its vehicles’ ability to navigate motorcades before they are deployed here.
