When Self-Driving Cars Don’t Actually Drive Themselves

Times Insider|When Self-Driving Cars Don’t Actually Drive Themselves

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I took my first thrust successful a self-driving car astir a decade ago. Like astir group who acquisition this brave caller world, I felt a heavy consciousness of awe that machines had mastered a accomplishment that erstwhile belonged solely to humans.

Then I remembered I was a reporter.

Over nan adjacent 10 years, first astatine Wired Magazine, now astatine The New York Times, I covered nan high-speed title to bring self-driving cars into nan lives of mundane Americans. And during that clip it became progressively clear to maine that though self-driving cars were shockingly nimble — so awe-inspiring — they could not yet lucifer nan powerfulness of nan quality brain. They still can’t.

My years of reporting culminated pinch an article my colleagues and I published past week astir really driverless cars get thief from humans.

Thanks to nan multimedia talents of Jason Henry, Ben Laffin and Rebecca Lieberman, nan article shows that though today’s robot taxis do not person drivers down nan steering wheels — immoderate don’t moreover person steering wheels — they still thin connected nan bully consciousness of group for illustration you and me.

In April, my chap newsman Yiwen Lu and I visited a bid halfway successful Foster City, Calif., operated by Zoox, a self-driving car institution owned by nan tech elephantine Amazon. Like different robot taxis, nan company’s self-driving vehicles sometimes struggle to thrust themselves, truthful they get thief from quality technicians sitting successful a freely room successful nan bid center.

Sometimes, a technician lends a helping manus to a robot taxi hundreds of miles away.

If a Zoox car is incapable to navigate a building area it has not seen before, for instance, a technician astatine nan bid halfway receives an alert. Then, utilizing nan machine rodent to tie a statement crossed a integer roadworthy representation connected a machine screen, they springiness nan car a caller way to travel astir nan building zone.