Things I am Waymo nervous and Waymo relaxed about after riding Waymo
Sternal Journalists!
Many of you are my age. Some of you are not. Those of you who were born in the late-ish 80s to early-ish 90s remember, though we may not thing about it, the Time When Rideshare Began.
If you were outside the generational bubble I inhabit, here’s how it went:
Uber was invented. But this was not the Uber we know. This was an uber Uber. Black cars only, and fully accessible to anyone who wanted them. It was expensive. As someone who was working at a magazine that regularly had events where celebrities needed to be put into fancy cars in 2012, I got to sit in on a meeting where the Southern California regional manager of Uber pitched my boss that we should have these strange unknown cars picking people up from our events. I loved this because, previously, it had been my job to arrange cars for our fanciest guests and I was very bad it. My boss did not love it because she, as many at the time did, thought nobody would get into some random-ass stranger’s car, even if they did have a black car license.
LYFT arrived. Lyft, at the time was known for two things: 1) unlike Ubers, these were not professional drivers. These were random ass people who were driving their car and giving a “l(i/y)ft” to anyone who needed one, for an algorithmically optimized fare that neither party got to set, but both had essentially agreed upon. 2) They all had big-ass pink mustaches on the front of the cars. This was to underline and/or neutralize the zaniness of the whole situation, that you would be getting into a random person’s car without them being reasonably vetted or trained for the task of driving you where you needed to go.
Lyft undercut Uber’s pricing.
Uber stole Lyft’s model with a thing called UberX, which we now think of as “uber.”
The world got accustomed, acclimated, and addicted to riding in random cars with people who were not professionally trained or vetted drive anyone anywhere.
This brings us to 2024, when I, Julian, your Sternal Journalist extrordinaire, decided that it was my time to try a Waymo. Waymo, in case you’ve stayed blissfully out of tech news for the past 5 years, are one of the big self-driving car companies starting to roll out in major cities. They’ve been in Phoenix, Arizona for a while, but just started in Los Angeles in the past couple months.
I’ve seen them driving around for almost a year with their whirring cameras analyzing everything around them and thought, “What the fuck holy shit that cars got nobody in it.” But it was only in the last month that the car with nobody in it was allowed to actually have somebody in it.
So I jokes for a couple weeks that I wanted to try it and then, for you dear readers, I actually did. On a route that could have been a 15 minute walk or a 5 minute Lime scooter (who knows whether that’s more or less dangerous), I called a Waymo. It arrived quickly and at about the same price as an Uber/Lyft. Here are the things that made me Waymo nervous and Waymo relaxed.
1. It feels grossly futuristic.
I was WayMo Nervous about how deep into the future it felt for this drone car to just arrive, not at a moment’s notice per se but close! Some technological advances feel right and some of them feel like “oh oh no no no this is too early we’re not ready for that” and this is what it felt like when a sleek, all-electric Jag pulled up to my front door with the initials I had chosen displayed on the top of the car.
2. It drives like a human.
Just getting straight to the question of the matter, I was WayMo Relaxed by how responsible of a driver it felt. While it wasn’t overly cautious, it definitely felt aware of its surroundings and generally had the rhythm of a human driver. At no point did I feel like it’s driving indicated to me that it was about to do something crazy.
3. It drives like a HUMAN.
This was also and especially weird as fuck and made me WAYmo Nervous. I was in the backseat of a car with my partner, and there was NOBODY in either front seat, and yet everything about the driving pattern indicated that someone was there. Can someone say g-g-g-g-ghost? Because that’s what it felt like. I cannot imagine this being a thing that people easily get used to.
4. The atmosphere was nice.
They know what they’re doing. The A/C was optimal. The lighting was relaxing. The sounds were soothing. Everything about getting into the car was WayMo relaxing, and changing the music or the temperature or whatever else was very intuitive and easy. It alleviated any guilt or shame or worry you’ve ever felt when asking a rideshare driver to change something about their car which you’re driving in.
5. It might help usher in the breakdown of community.
Here’s my big thing. Here’s the thing that makes me Way Way Way Mo Nervous, especially at a time when Apple has announced AI integration that allows people to neither need to write texts perfectly nor read texts perfectly (and this isn’t an Apple-only issue—I’m sure all smartphones will be rolling out similar functions in short order): Waymo makes us less connected.
I can still remember the first conversation I had with a rideashare driver. I was using a coupon code to go to drinks with a date instead of taking a taxi (this was not a first date and it was her idea, I wouldn’t have cheated out otherwise, I promise!!). Our driver was a part of a literary society who loved some author that escapes me now, but he was telling us all about it! I thought it was cool! She thought it was cool! He thought it was cool!
And it was all actually suggested by Lyft. This is a thing that’s lost in our memories of the beginning of rideshare. Lyft encouraged their drivers to share interesting personal details with riders. They were kooky! They were different! They were weird enough to take a job that forced them to put a big pink mustache on the front of their car!
The experience of taking an Uber or Lyft has flattened since then into the experience of a taxi, but I do think we’ve all gotten used to Rideshare Driver as a community member who we interact with on some regular basis. What worries me is not that these jobs will go away per se (although I obviously hope that the autonomous vehicle will takeover rideshares at a rate sustainable to people finding good, new jobs), but that we might be hurtling towards a future where we’ve cemented that travel is a time when we will no longer converse or interact with or be aware of people in our community, which will put us all further into our own bubbles and give us the illusion that we get to live life in one specific way and that we can then generally assume others should live in our specific way, which creates discord and conflict and war and all the things I am generally WAY Mo worried about.
But luckily, I’m the only person I know who has taken a Waymo so I hope this won’t be a big issue any time soon.
Anyway!
Recommendations!
How An American Dream of Housing Became a Reality in Sweden. Article. This made me feel hopeful about the future of housing in the United States, even though it’s technically pessimistic. Who wants to go to the Swedish hotel mentioned in the article with me?
The Regionals: Vietnam. Video [Cypher]. A friend introduced me to this video tonight and told me it was the most accurate representation of Vietnam traffic he’s ever seen. It is also very cool.
What Does It Feel Like to Believe In God? Podcast. P.J. Vogt is at it again. I really liked that the guest pointed out (I’m paraphrasing) that we split the world into religious and atheist when we should split it into questioning and not.
Peaky Blinders. Television Show. Eleven years after it started, I’m checking it out. It feels of a different time, not because it takes place a hundred years ago, but because it’s from a pre- (or beginning of-) prestige era television when you just got to have three themes and three to five mysteries circling each other, and they were all pretty obvious but you got to devour it without having to Google much after.
Anyway! That’s it for this week! Be safe, try new things, foster community. And Happy Father’s Day to those who celebrate!
Love!
Julian!