I took my first ride in a Waymo robotaxi last month, and now I’m obsessed. I have taken five autonomous car rides since, and even convinced two reluctant friends to do it too. Here’s how I went from a hater to a cautious friend of robot cars in five weeks.

Waymo’s parent company Alphabet – which also owns Google – recently launched a pilot programme in San Francisco. When I was ready to hail one, I simply downloaded an app that closely resembles a rideshare app and pushed the call button. Within minutes, a white Jaguar SUV rolled up in front of my house, with its large top hat of whirling lidar sensors and cameras. A light on the roof flashed my initials.

When I pushed the “unlock” button in my app, the passenger doors extruded handles and I jumped into the front seat next to… an invisible person. Truly, that is how it feels to ride shotgun in a Waymo, as the steering wheel spins on its own. It reminded me of being 7 years old on Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion ride, where a holographic ghost appears in the carriage beside you.

My point is, yes, it did feel a little scary to be sitting by myself in a car that was driving on its own. A female voice came over the speakers reminding me to buckle up, then asked me to be patient if we went a little slowly because “I’m a polite driver”.

Screens in the dashboard and back of the car showed what the car “saw” as it drove. It reminded me of the interface of Pokemon Go – a blocky, smoothed-out version of the real streets and buildings around you. Cars appeared as rectangles and humans were stick figures walking in little puddles of light. My robotaxi’s path was a bright line, weaving around these obstacles, paying attention to the stop signs and street lights that also popped up on the screen.

Seeing through the car’s eyes helped me get over my initial nervousness. I was more aware of my environment than I have ever been as a driver. Plus, there was a button to call for assistance from Waymo, as well as a “pull over now” button, which I found very comforting.

Overall, during my six rides, the car’s performance in odd situations has been good. It avoided a cyclist who shot into an intersection out of nowhere, and somehow navigated between two huge trucks on a narrow street.

There is something comforting about being driven around by a machine that is friendly and never tired or cranky.

Sure, it made weird decisions at times. At one point, my car took a narrow, winding side street full of traffic and pedestrians instead of going on a wide, fast thoroughfare. Other reported issues include cars , randomly .

There are also problems you might not expect. One night when I called a Waymo, the car rolled up with a large phallus doodled across its doors. Oops – it is easy to graffiti a car that nobody is driving.

Then there is the issue of people taking advantage of a safety feature that prevents the car from moving forwards if someone stands in front of it. Recently in San Francisco, two men stepped into the street to block a , refusing to move unless she gave them her phone number. Ultimately, the men wandered off and she was left frightened but physically unharmed, yet her experience raises questions. What if thieves stood in front of a Waymo while their buddies smashed the windows and demanded passengers’ stuff? Riding in a Waymo is safer in many ways, but it can also turn passengers into sitting ducks.

There are labour issues, too. Rideshare companies like Uber cut into the livelihoods of taxi drivers, undermining unions and creating a class of gig workers with few rights and no benefits. Robotaxis promise to eliminate rideshare and taxi driver jobs. Plus, the tech underlying autonomous cars is already being used in and . So each time I ride in a Waymo, I know the ghost at the steering wheel is the ghost of a dead job.

Still, it is impossible for me to ride in a robotaxi and not develop warm feelings towards it. There is something comforting about being driven around by a machine that is friendly, never tired or cranky and doesn’t infodump at you about conspiracy theories.

But there is more going on here. As Cynthia Breazeal, a robotics researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, found in 2001, will anthropomorphise anything – even a simple robot – if it behaves in a way we recognise as emotional.

That was definitely the case for me when the car told me it was “polite”. I couldn’t stop myself from saying “thank you” out loud. I felt cared for. And when it expertly zig-zagged around road works, I exclaimed “good job!” as if it were my cat. I don’t know where my relationship with these robotaxis is going – it’s complicated – but I think we might have a future together.

Annalee’s week

What I’m reading

Neuroscientist Kelly Clancy’s Playing with Reality, a history of gamification and game theory.

What I’m watching

Slow Horses, a masterclass in the “sleazy, disgusting genius” subgenre.

What I’m working on

Research for a big project about the ancient history of parties and celebrations.

Annalee Newitz is a science journalist and author. Their latest book is Stories Are Weapons: Psychological warfare and the American mind. They are the co-host of the Hugo-winning podcast Our Opinions Are Correct. You can follow them @annaleen and their website is

Driverless cars have the green light to operate as paid ride-hailing services in San Francisco after the companies Waymo and Cruise won approval from California state regulators. But the decision comes amidst pushback from city officials and residents over the cars creating traffic jams and interfering with the work of firefighters and police officers.

The roll-out of driverless cars in San Francisco has had a bumpy start. Viral videos have shown them creating or ignoring firefighter and police commands , while have halted them by placing traffic safety cones on their bonnets (hoods) to trick vehicle sensors.

“Regardless of how the vote comes out, the companies have lost a huge amount of credibility,” says at George Mason University in Virginia. “They’ve lost a huge amount of what otherwise was public favour when they first started driving five years ago.”

On 10 August, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) heard more than five hours of public comments before approving the driverless car companies’ requests in a 3 to 1 decision. Waymo and Cruise can now expand their commercial services to charge passengers for round-the-clock driverless robotaxis in San Francisco – although the companies have suggested that they would not immediately add swarms of additional driverless cars.

But in a held on 7 August just days before the vote, San Francisco fire chief told the commissioners about firefighters having to “babysit” driverless cars for up to half an hour after the vehicles drove into the middle of fire or medical emergencies. She also said tech companies have withheld data on such incidents from the public and having failed to consult early on with emergency responders.

“I understand and appreciate the safety that autonomous vehicles can bring to the table in terms of no drunk drivers, no speeding, all of that kind of stuff,” said Nicholson. “However, they’re still not ready for prime time because of how they have impacted our operations.”

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Beyond 55 written reports of driverless cars interfering with law enforcement and other first responder operations, the city has received around 600 complaints from the public since the autonomous vehicles began operating in San Francisco in June 2022. City officials had warned that such problems could increase dramatically if Waymo, owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, and Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors, decide to expand their city fleets beyond the existing 250 and 300 vehicles, respectively.

“What we have seen is that things are not getting better,” said , head of automated driving policy at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, during the 7 August meeting. “The monthly rate of incidents has been growing significantly over the course of 2023.”

Waymo and Cruise representatives attending the 7 August meeting emphasised their driverless cars’ safety records based on company statistics, but acknowledged the companies lacked data on vehicle interference with first responders. They also highlighted efforts to train firefighters and police in how to interact with autonomous vehicles – although city officials said it was impractical to expect first responders to remember lengthy instructions for dealing with each company’s vehicles.

The companies have sponsored a “Safer Roads for All” campaign and Cruise in newspapers arguing that “Humans are terrible drivers” to emphasise autonomous vehicles as a supposedly safer alternative. But experts including Cummings have criticised the effort as using misleading statistics. An analysis of California’s road traffic accident data suggests driverless vehicles are having four to eight times more minor accidents than human drivers, says Cummings.

at the University of California, Berkeley, says California needs to overhaul state reporting requirements on driverless car incidents to provide a clearer picture of the technology’s impact. He also cited tech industry “overoptimism” in trying to jumpstart a driverless car ride-hailing service within San Francisco’s narrow streets, which are already crowded with cars, buses, cable cars, cyclists and pedestrians. Other cities such as Phoenix in Arizona or Austin in Texas may prove easier alternatives for expansion, he says.

“They really should have tried getting this to work really well in a simple environment before tackling one of the most complicated environments in the country,” says Shladover.

A Waymo representative did not comment, but shared a by Waymo co-CEO in which she thanked the California Public Utilities Commission for the “vote of confidence” and described the new permit as “the true beginning of our commercial operations in San Francisco”.

Cruise didn’t respond to a request for comment.