Ready or not, driverless cars are here (2023)

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. Although it has been checked by the transcribers, it may contain errors. Please watch the audio of the episode before quoting this transcript. If you have any questions, please email transcripts@nytimes.com.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbara. This is the Journal.

Today, after careful voting, self-driving cars, once a fantasy in Silicon Valley, have become a 24/7 reality in San Francisco. My colleague Cade Metz describes the unique challenges of living with self-driving cars.

It's Wednesday, August 23.

Cade, we've invited you to our studio in New York to tell us what's happening in San Francisco. It doesn't sound very efficient, but anyway, San Francisco has become the capital of this great self-driving car experiment. And I want you to describe what it's like to live in San Francisco, in this new reality.

As you walk the streets there are hundreds of these cars almost constantly driving through most of the city. Once you leave downtown, the financial district, you can't walk a block without seeing one of these cars. And if you're in San Francisco for the first time, or have come here for the first time in years, you won't believe what you see: hundreds of cars are driving through the city with no one behind the wheel.

These cars are not difficult to spot. They are equipped with all kinds of sensors designed to detect everything that happens in the world around them. These are large, sometimes the size of a trash can, sensors that rotate. And you can't-

I imagine a hybrid of a police car and a child with braces.

An analogy I like to make is the Ghostbusters car, the car from the original 1984 "Ghostbusters" that is all about it.

Okay, so you've been in those cars. I want you to describe the whole experience of getting into a car and how you got such a self-driving car in the first place. Because of course this is not the usual old hail system.

Let's continue with my last ride from last Wednesday. I opened the Waymo app which allows me to hail a car just like Uber. The difference was that he didn't pick me up exactly where I wanted. It gave me a spot in an alley about a block and a half away, where there's less traffic.

And finally my car arrives. I pull the app back out and there's a little button that says it's unlocked.

As I get into the car, a disembodied voice comes out of the speaker and greets me by name. - Hello, Cade.

It also includes a short safety briefing.

Then the wheel will start spinning by itself. The car starts to move. It's like driving your daughter in the car right after she turned 16 and learned to drive.

On the edge!

Yes and no. I'm nervous because my daughter is a new driver, but I also have a daughter who is wonderfully conscientious. She is so careful while driving that she stops a few feet before reaching an intersection. But that's what these self-driving cars are all about. They follow the pace and care of a particularly conscientious 16-year-old driver.

[LAUGHTER]:

Driving up and down the hills of San Francisco takes much longer than an Uber due to the car's overly cautious nature.

[MUSIC TONE]

Overall, how would you rate this ride, this creepy, driverless, wary version of the taxi?

It got me where I wanted to go, but it took me a relatively long time to get there. On the other hand, it's also a ride to Disney World, where it's a real novelty. It's something you don't necessarily experience every day. And you ride this ride with your senses stimulated, aware of this strange thing you're doing.

And like many novelties brought to the real world, they are hotly debated, especially in San Francisco, where these cars cause accidents. In some cases, these accidents cause injuries. They encounter emergency vehicles. They do things they shouldn't.

This is a growing concern among many San Francisco residents, who do not want their city to become a petri dish for these kinds of cars, which can cause serious problems in everyday life.

Normal. I think back to what you just said. It's like a ride in Disney World, but San Francisco isn't Disney World. It is a city with public streets and pedestrians. So I want to understand how we got to the point where an experiment on the scale you describe is even possible. So tell us the story of how we got to the point where San Francisco is full of creepy self-driving vehicles.

Scientists and researchers have been trying to build autonomous vehicles since the 1960s. The goal, largely carried out by laboratories funded by the Department of Defense, is to build autonomous vehicles for the military. It is better to have a vehicle, a tank, that does not have a driver behind the wheel, so to speak.

If shot at, it will be destroyed.

Precisely. It's a difficult goal. But over time, people are starting to realize that it can be done for civilians too, that you can use the same technology to drive a normal car, potentially changing our lives as well, and potentially building a car that's safer than a man.

Technology never gets tired. Technology doesn't drink whiskey or get behind the wheel. Having a technology drive that's different from humans has a lot of benefits if you can get the technology to a level where it can drive it as well as we need it to.

And when does it start happening?

This starts to happen around 2005. DARPA, the research unit of the Department of Defense, is organizing the competition. The idea is that several research teams build an autonomous vehicle and then compete with each other to see who is best suited. And two boys notice that this is happening.

They happen to be Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. One of the leaders of one of the investigative teams, Sebastian Thrun, tells the story of Larry Page, who showed up at one of these parades disguised as a hat and sunglasses so he wouldn't be recognized.

Eventually, Page hires Thrun to run a new lab at Google called Google X. The idea is to tackle what Page and his collaborators call "moon throws," which are extremely ambitious technology projects. The first thing they decide to do is a driverless car.

The last shot on the moon.

The last shot on the moon. Larry Page wants to put one in your driveway so you can get into a car every day that drives itself and takes you where you want to go while you do something else.

Take a nap and read to the baby.

Absolute. And that's something that excites a lot of people. However, there is an interesting disagreement between Thrun and Page that explains the next ten years of development of this technology. Larry Page, who runs a company like Google, wants this to happen.

Sebastian Thrun, the man he hired to run this lab and project, knows how difficult it will be. He realizes how far they will have to go. And he doesn't necessarily know how to get there.

And why is it such a challenge? Why does Thrun think it will be so difficult to realize Larry Page's vision of a self-driving car in every driveway?

It's not hard to get a car to turn left at an intersection. Turning right is not difficult. Accelerating, braking - these things are not difficult. It's hard to deal with the chaos we encounter every time we get in the car; every second something unexpected can happen.

You need a machine that can, above all, fully recognize what is happening around it. You should know that it is a pedestrian and not a bicycle. Once you are clear about everything around you, you need to anticipate what will happen to each of these things. And once you anticipate what's going to happen, you have to figure out how to respond to it. And that takes wisdom. It requires a quality that machines still don't have and certainly didn't have in the early 2000s.

Normal. Driving is not just steering while driving. It's about reacting to all the possible things that could go wrong. A dog runs into the road, a bicycle crosses your path - we humans instinctively learn to react. It's harder to teach a robot.

Correct.

But despite how difficult it is to train a robot, we know that autonomous car technology is advancing. So tell us how it happened.

Larry Page, the founder of Google, advises: follow it. And Thrun follows suit.

Normal. How high to jump?

That's why Thrun and his colleagues at the new Google X lab start building an autonomous car in 2009. And by 2010, they'll quietly begin testing the technology on California's public roads.

Secret self-driving car project to get these self-driving cars on the road?

Until The New York Times and my predecessor here, John Markoff, heard about the project and informed the world in the fall of 2010 that it was happening.

And what's the answer?

Well, this is triggering a technology arms race, not only among specialty tech companies like Google, but also among new breeds of passenger carriers, Uber and Lyft, and traditional car companies that now see a threat to the way they travel. to do things. They jump in and start competing too.

And when companies like Google and Uber started talking about this technology publicly –

They talked about it like it was right around the corner.

If you read the tech press, if you read the mainstream press at the time --

- you assumed that next year -

If you wanted, there would be a driverless car in the driveway.

And that has never been the case.

There was some noise.

There's always buzz in Silicon Valley. In this case, the sound was particularly strong.

ABOUT. So now that all the big players are pouring such an extraordinary amount of money into this unproven technology, what will happen to it?

At first glance, the types of cars built were perfect. Reporters got into a car in Mountain View, California. This would lead them around the block without any error. However, the reality beneath the surface was that building this technology was extremely difficult and took years, and the media hype did not reflect reality. But that changed in 2018.

When?

There was an accident in Arizona involving an Uber test car. A 49-year-old woman crossed a multi-lane road with her bicycle at night. She was hit and killed. Behind the wheel was a safety driver who was supposed to take over if something went wrong, but that didn't happen.

The bottom line is that someone was killed by a self-driving car, bringing the industry to an almost immediate halt. Yes, people behind the wheel are involved in accidents every day. People die as a result of these accidents. However, if a new technology kills someone, it is of much greater concern to the general public and regulators. They start to wonder if it will work.

Following the accident, Uber immediately ceased its testing efforts in not only Arizona, but also California and Pittsburgh. Toyota follows suit. And slowly, all of these companies are starting to admit that it's harder than they thought.

Even Google is starting to change the way it does this. The autonomous car business will be transferred to a new company called Waymo. The company's ambitions are beginning to move away from the concept of a car in the driveway to a robotic taxi service created by Uber and Lyft. Rather than having a car in the driveway that can potentially go anywhere, these companies are opting to limit the self-driving service to a specific geographic area.

Limit variables.

That is how it works. If you walk around San Francisco, you limit the number of cars to that one city, you can build a digital map, a literal three-dimensional visual map of the city, and you can give that map to the car. And then you test repeatedly in that limited environment.

You limit the chaos, you limit unexpected moments. It will be easier and this is what the industry is starting to strive for. And so we come to the moment when San Francisco, America's second most populous city, becomes a testing ground for autonomous vehicles, with hundreds of cars driving through the city.

This takes years and many companies test these vehicles to make sure they are safe. But if they test -

– it is becoming increasingly clear to car travelers and other city dwellers that they are defective –

- that they make mistakes -

- that they can block traffic -

- that they can cause accidents -

- that they can cause injury.

All this culminates in a public hearing earlier this month in California that will decide the future of these companies in that city. The question is, can they operate in the city like Uber or Lyft, just without drivers behind the wheel?

But this decision is even more important. If these companies don't get approval in their flagship San Francisco, what will happen in other cities across the country?

In a way, this is a meeting where the future of the autonomous car is at stake.

Absolute.

We will be right back.

Cade, set the stage for us for this meeting in San Francisco, where perhaps nothing but the future of the self-driving car is at stake.

It is a meeting where four state regulators will decide the future of two different companies: Cruise, owned by General Motors, and Waymo, owned by Google. And San Francisco is a particularly interesting place for these kinds of voices. Activism is a big part of this city and has been for decades. People are not afraid to express their opinions and concerns about this technology.

But at the same time, it is the center of technological innovation in the country, and maybe even the world. And you're going to get people who are just as sure that this has to be done and that this has to be done now.

The two sides from San Francisco will meet on August 10 for a public hearing.

Where regulators will decide the future of this issue.

You get a group that stands behind Waymo and Cruise and starts paying for rides right away.

This applies to both cyclists

— people with disabilities, healthcare professionals.

And many more reasons why these cars should be immediately released to traffic.

It seems that they mainly talk about safety.

Safety is the main argument, but there are other arguments as well.

My name is Sean Durkin. I drive driverless vehicles. As a gender nonconforming person, I have encountered drivers who left me on the side of the road and refused to open their vehicle.

To ensure that this technology does not discriminate against people as a human driver would, a taxi driver can overtake someone on the street.

Then there are those who stood up and just gave the classic Silicon Valley justification.

Technological progress has to take place.

Your poodle is worthless.

Precisely.

Thank you Commissioners. My name is Michael Smith and I am the co-founder of a successful startup here in San Francisco. I am a big believer in technology if it is useful, safe and actually works.

Of course, there are just as many arguments on the other side.

People who say it's not as safe as people.

This prevents fire trucks and police from getting where they need to go.

People have also argued how often they argue when new technologies come out:

Existing jobs will disappear as a result.

That Uber drivers, who now earn their living by driving around the city, will be replaced by self-driving cars.

And a lot of people show up -

– who are just mad at the tech industry.

This anger has been building in San Francisco for years -

- when tech workers take over the city, they will really change the structure of the city.

And the cost of the city.

And the cost of the city. Some people are just fed up and this is a way for them to express their anger.

Normal. Because what better embodies the disembodied power of technology and the money that comes with it, and everything people might not like about it, than literally a self-driving car?

Sometimes it is difficult to pinpoint the technology and the changes it brings. It's physical technology in a physical place that is causing real chaos in the city.

ABOUT. So all these people testify, but in the end, as you said, only four people will actually vote. How does this vote actually work?

The committee voted 3 to 1 to immediately allow Waymo and Cruise driverless paid rides in San Francisco. And this is a sign that these companies can fulfill their ambitions across the country as well.

And in that sense, they open a Pandora's box without a driver. What will happen after this vote?

Almost immediately we see the inside of this Pandora's box. There are two Cruise accidents in a week that really open people's eyes. One of these touring cars does not recognize the work zone correctly and hits wet cement. Tell about a moment that can easily be shared over and over again on social media.

And I assume it was.

Indeed it was.

Such incidents involving these cars have been happening in the city for years. However, with this mood, the technology is being scrutinized more closely and people are starting to notice what's going on.

Okay, so what's wrong. Normal.

A few days after the cement incident in San Francisco, a fire truck accident occurs, injuring a passenger in a cruise vehicle.

The next day, the California DMV asked Cruise to cut its fleet of self-driving cars in half.

Wow.

That is why they are reducing the number of cars from about 400 to 200.

It is interesting. So the state commission votes to allow the development of this technology, and then the DMV turns around a few days, a week or so later and says they need to take the technology back. What are you going to make of it?

Well, it shows what has long been clear that these cars have flaws, and it all depends on how much tolerance we as a society have for those flaws. On this road to this utopia where technology can do everything by itself and make the world safe, how much chaos, how many accidents, how many injuries is still okay if we reach this goal?

Well, I think that's a good question. How big should the tolerance be when it comes to autonomous cars? Because the events you mentioned, driving a car in wet cement, are certainly embarrassing, but does this fundamentally change our understanding of the safety of these cars?

And aren't these kinds of failures the natural course of technological progress? There is a transition period. It's hard until there's finally widespread adoption. Or is the case of a self-driving car unique? Is there something about taking a human out of a moving two-ton piece of metal that means our tolerance will only be lower? How do you feel about it? How should we think about it?

Our tolerance will surely decrease. This is how our mind is built. As humans, we rely on human skill and ingenuity, and we rely on our own judgment to make the right decision when lives are at stake. Do we trust this technology which in many ways is not as adept as we are, which cannot reason as we do, which has no common sense that you and I really rely on and depend on?

It does not exist. He has many more things that we don't have. There are more sensors. It can process data faster in some ways, but it doesn't have the quality that makes us human. Do we trust that which is so different from us that it will replace us? This is a difficult question that anyone can answer. And that's what we're trying to answer here.

Normal. I think this raises a question that goes back to the very beginning of our conversation and the situation presented by Google co-founder Larry Page. The question is: is this the jackpot, the driverless car we all really need?

This is still an open question. We don't know if we really need it. And even if we are sure, it is not clear whether technology can meet this need. We don't yet know if it's safer than a human driver. We don't know yet if it's cheaper than a human driver, because it has to be.

What is happening in San Francisco is an opportunity to answer this question and see if such a need exists and if the technology can meet it.

And when will we arrive at the answer?

[LAUGHTER]:

I won't hold you.

It took thirteen years to get there. It will be years before we get to the point where we can really answer that question.

Well, Cade, thank you very much.

Thank you.

We will be right back.

Here's what else you need to know today. The Times reports that Ukraine's counter-offensive against Russia may fail because Ukraine has put too many of its troops in the wrong places. The main goal of the counteroffensive is to cut off Russian supply lines in southern Ukraine, but US military leaders say Ukrainian commanders have divided troops and firepower between southern and eastern Ukraine, effectively diluting them.

Eight candidates have qualified for today's first Republican presidential debate in Milwaukee, which will not be attended by race favorite Donald Trump, who declined to attend. Candidates include Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former Trump Vice President Mike Pence, former Governors Chris Christie and Nikki Haley, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott and conservative businessman Vivek Ramaswamy. Debate starts at 9:00 PM EST.

Today's episode was produced by Rikki Novetsky, Olivia Natt and Luke Vander Ploeg, with assistance from Shannon Lin and Jessica Cheung. It was edited by Devon Taylor with assistance from Michael Benoist, Paige Cowett, and Lisa Chow, features original music by Marion Lozano, Rowan Niemisto, and Dan Powell, and was designed by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brandenburg and Ben Landsverk of Wunderly.

So much for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbara. See you tomorrow.