Prelude

I’d love to not have to own a car. For that to happen, though, public transit would need to be reliable, extensive, and 24/7, and would need to welcome dogs (BART prohibits dogs except small ones that fit in carriers, and Muni only allows 1 dog per person, with extensive limitations). Bike and pedestrian travel would need to be prioritized and safe. We’d need high-speed rail to L.A. to visit my family. For other people to forgo cars, they may need public ebike parking, where apartment-dwellers can securely park and charge their bikes overnight. They may need transit with child safety seats. They may need extra security to feel safe riding a bus home when their 3am hospital shift ends. All that being said, those things do not seem to be in the cards in the near future, so I support anything that enables reduced car traffic and car ownership in San Francisco.

My War on Robot Cars

For some reason, in early 2020, GM’s Cruise vehicles got permission to test their extremely dangerous autonomous vehicles – without human safety drivers! – in my San Francisco neighborhood. Because it was the beginning of the pandemic, I was out running or walking the dogs around my neighborhood 3 or 4 times a day. At first it was amusing to encounter the little robot cars, but that amusement quickly turned to anger when they kept trying to run me over. They would completely ignore me in a crosswalk, or sometimes stop and then inch toward me aggressively, rather than waiting at the stop sign for me to cross.

I quickly came to both resent my neighborhood being used as a playground for these corporate death machines, and to assume that self-driving cars were extremely dangerous and would soon be killing people across the city. I discovered that if you walked up to a Cruise vehicle and pushed down, hard, with both hands, on the hood, you could trick the car into thinking it had hit something and would become disabled. This became a fun hobby (hey, it was the pandemic, activity options were scarce). I loved leaving them, motionless, in the middle of a street. But mostly I just wanted them gone.

Eventually, the state realized how dangerous they were and revoked their license to operate, but not before they actually did kill people.

Enter the Waymo

Having never taken a Waymo, I assumed they were indistinguishable from the Cruise vehicles, and you couldn’t pay me enough to ride in one. However, once ridership was opened to regular San Franciscans, friends started telling me about how safe they felt. At first I dismissed these reports, but the more people I trusted told me about having ridden in one, the curiouser I became.

I think most women have been sexually harassed, or have at least been subjected to creepy behavior, by an Uber or Lyft driver, so that was always on my mind. But then I took an Uber home from my book club where the driver was quite elderly and seemed not to be paying attention to the road at all as he tried to chat up my friend and I, running multiple stop signs. When I finally got out of the car, relieved, I thought, “A Waymo can’t be worse than this. And no creepy driver!” So the next time I needed a ride to pick my ebike up at The New Wheel’s then-extremely-out-of-the-way repair shop, I decided to take one.

I was genuinely shocked at how smooth the ride was. I was reassured by the back seat screen that showed you what the car was “seeing” in real time – i.e. the outline of a pedestrian, cyclist, or other car in relation to the Waymo’s position. The turns were smooth, it stopped at every stop sign, it never tried to run a red light. It gave me the encouragement I needed to take a Waymo again the next time. With each ride, I was more impressed.

The Waymos Proliferate

I wasn’t the only person experiencing this phenomenon. In 2025, it seemed like the number of Waymos on the street grew exponentially. I mostly walk, bike, or take transit everywhere, so I mostly experienced them from the outside, as fellow travellers on the public streets. I started to notice that, unlike most human drivers, they respected my right-of-way as a pedestrian. They never tried to run me over in a crosswalk. They stayed behind my bike in share-the-road situations without following dangerously closely or honking.

What’s more – and this was the real turning point for me – I felt like they reached a critical mass in which they managed to slow down other car traffic. A car stuck behind a Waymo travelling the speed limit can’t speed. A Waymo stopping at a yellow light prevents the car behind it from trying to run the red. Put enough Waymos on the street, and they have the effect of moderating car traffic overall.

Ultimately, I have come to see them as a service that can provide positive effects for the city, even for those who don’t ride in them.

Yes, I Know, Alternatives Would be Better

Of course, I would much rather live in a city that has a robust, efficient, 24/7 transit system that obviates the needs for Waymos entirely. But both BART and Muni are only getting worse, with threats to degrade service even further if certain funding measures don’t pass this November. I understand the argument that when people have the option of taking Waymos, those fare dollars are funneled into Google’s pocket rather than into the transit agencies' coffers (as they would be if people were forced to take transit because Waymo does not exist). That’s a good argument! But I don’t think it’s realistic to try and force people to take terrible, unreliable transit that doesn’t go where they need to get to anyway, in hopes that this will eventually make the transit better.

I DO believe in taxing Waymos heavily in order to pay for better transit, such that people will be persuaded to take transit that has been improved via better funding (and will be dissuaded from taking the more-expensive Waymos). I would also support other measures that channel enthusiasm for Waymos into ways to support SFMTA and BART.

But in the meantime, I no longer think the best solution is to just get rid of the Waymos entirely. And I think they CAN reduce people’s need to own a car, and by serving as moderating agents, can slow down human car traffic. By making car traffic slower, that may have the side benefit of discouraging more people from driving. It’s been a journey, but I have come around to thinking that Waymos or other autonomous vehicles are a starting point for potential improvements to how we get around our city, rather than a blight upon it. And I’d still rather be biking or crossing the street in front of a Waymo than a human driver.