California DMV approves map increase in Waymo driverless operations

I didn’t think I’d be so pro Waymo but anecdotally I had a fantastic experience with one recently.

I was at a music show very late ~1-2am in SF and walked out to grab an uber to the airbnb I was staying at. I kept getting assigned an uber, then I’d wait 10 minutes, then they’d cancel. Rinse and repeat for 30 minutes, mind you I even resorted to calling Lyfts at the same time and nothing bit. Then I say screw it and download Waymo. 1 minute and it’s accepted my ride, and I know it’s not going to cancel because it’s a robot. 3 minutes and it picks me up. The car is clean, quiet, I can play my own music in it via Spotify, and it’s driving honestly more safely than some uber drivers I’ve had in SF. It’s one of the few things where the end result actually lives up to the promise from a tech company.

This is what radicalized me. “Uber is 4 minutes away” so I call them, and it tells me it’s trying to find drivers for the next 6-8 minutes, then a driver is selected and they are 11 minutes away, then they sit at their location for 4-5 minutes, then they start moving toward me, then they’re 5 minutes away and cancel and uber changes to finding me a ride. Infuriating.