For drivers, Los Angeles has never been a spot for the faint of heart. A land where most cannot fathom life without wheels offers a every day parade of frustrations: traffic jams, accidents, construction, road rage, boredom.
Every transplant comes with a history of adaptive learning.
“You get into the rhythm, matching the energy of others,” said Tamara Siemering, 30, an actress who moved from Sacramento a yr ago. She said the difference in automobile culture is big.
“It’s a very selfish feeling,” she said. “Everyone says, ‘I have to be somewhere out of the way.’ There’s not a lot of shared driving – it’s a lot of honking at each other, accelerating and increasing speeds.”
Now a completely new breed of driver is entering the fray – one that promotes itself as balanced and unemotional, respectful and obedient. This means there is no driver at all.
Waymo, a fleet of autonomous taxis that already operates in San Francisco and Phoenix, has begun transporting passengers in a small area of Los Angeles County. The white Jaguar SUVs – distinguished by rotating black domes covering an array of cameras and sensors – have been approved for commercial transport, with free rides available to a select few. It will soon offer a paid service at prices comparable to those charged by Uber and Lyft.
Waymo, owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, touts its autonomous vehicles as “essentially the most experienced drivers on the planet.” There is already a waiting list of 50,000 people to ride one in Los Angeles. For some, the intrigue is technology. Others are attracted to the idea of avoiding small talk and the pressure of tipping.
Still, community leaders have protested Waymo’s arrival, warning of safety risks, while labor unions fear how it could affect jobs in an already saturated market. Many residents are also not so sure whether they would trust an empty driver’s seat.
Mrs. Siemering is among them. Before she jumps into one herself, she wants to learn more about how robot cars cope with the city’s intense car culture.
“It’s a bit sketchy. I want to wait and see how it develops,” she said. “I don’t really want to be a guinea pig, a guinea pig.” In January, her own 1996 Ford Taurus was involved in a fender bender. But she plans to remain on the bus or depend on human Uber and Lyft drivers to get to her day job as a bartender at a caviar bar in West Hollywood.
Waymo’s footprint will probably be small at first. With fewer than 50 cars, its territory is proscribed to roughly 63 square miles, stretching from Santa Monica to downtown Los Angeles. For now, it is going to not operate on the airport, and its cars don’t drive on highways, that are a facility of this kind within the region.
The company recognizes these shortcomings but wants to contemplate expanding by serving those that need rides near home, said Chris Ludwick, Waymo’s director of product management. He hopes nervous passengers will soon learn that there are few experiences like being completely alone as a chauffeur in a luxury automobile.
“Having your own space that you can control is kind of magical,” Ludwick said. “You can turn on any music, you can change the temperature. This is your space. You can be whoever you want, do whatever you want.”
He added that safety is the primary priority in the corporate’s activities. “We take our driving behavior very seriously,” Ludwick said.
Last fall, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass sent a letter to the California Public Utilities Commission emphasizing that autonomous vehicles require more frequent testing and that local jurisdictions must have more control over them.
She cited quite a few problems in San Francisco, including cases of ignoring yellow caution tape and warning signs, driving into a fireplace scene and parking on a fireplace hose, contributing to the death of an individual by blocking an ambulance and dragging a pedestrian 20 feet. Some of essentially the most disturbing incidents involved Cruise, an autonomous vehicle company that was ordered by state regulators in October to stop providing taxi services.
But dozens of groups supported Waymo’s expansion into Los Angeles because the Public Utilities Commission considered its decision this yr. These included disability rights groups, which argued that autonomous taxis would give their constituents the liberty to travel without having to depend on other people.
“This fulfills the dream of countless blind Americans to have complete autonomy over their transportation on the same terms as any other citizen with a driver’s license,” Mark A. Riccobono, president of the National Federation of the Blind, he wrote to the committee in February.
Waymo, which began offering pop-up tours in Los Angeles in October, was approved earlier this month for a broader rollout. It also has plans to supply services in San Mateo County in Northern California and Austin, Texas.
Trade unions and employees fear the appearance of autonomous vehicles will threaten livelihoods and put much more pressure on drivers who say they already suffer from inflation, high gas prices and low wages.
“We have to work twice as many hours to make the same income while robots take over the industry,” said Nicole Moore, president of Rideshare Drivers United, a corporation of 20,000 drivers across California.
Many passenger transport drivers see the complete industry at some point moving to computers. But some smile collectively. Good luck, they are saying, in coping with the eccentricities of pickups and drop-offs.
Passengers have been unwittingly spoiled by rideshare customs that adapt to their needs and bend the foundations. This means you may stand wherever you wish and wait in your automobile to indicate up. Those in a rush can ask to step on the gas. Alternative routes may also be suggested.
“Waymo will exceed the speed limit, won’t stop you at red curbs, hydrants or bus zones – it will walk you to your car,” said Sergio Avedian, who drives for Uber in Los Angeles and co-founds The Rideshare Guy, an internet site for gig drivers .
“If I’m giving a ride to Hollywood at 1 a.m., I’m double-parking, if not triple-parking, because there’s a million people there,” he said.
Mr. Avedian drove a Waymo automobile a couple of weeks ago and was impressed with the ride quality. But he’s seen how passengers can turn into irritated by a code that could force the corporate to bypass a construction zone and park two blocks away.
And while Waymo has devoted fans in Phoenix and San Francisco, some worry it is not the proper fit for a city where about 340 people died in traffic crashes in 2023. For the primary time in nine years, road-related deaths exceeded homicides.
“I don’t trust them with something weighing 4,000 pounds going 60 miles an hour,” said Jim Honeycutt, a construction manager working on the development of several subway stations in Los Angeles.
Mr. Honeycutt, 75, doesn’t consider software could make higher decisions where humans could be improper. “Because,” he said, “humans invented computers.”