No. Self-driving taxis are still not working

More than two years have passed since the somewhat comical incident involving the self-driving taxi in Phoenix, Arizona, which was repeatedly stopped by a simple traffic cone… and then chased by the broken-down car:

However, significant progress has certainly been made since then, you would think, right? Everyone is talking about artificial intelligence and when it comes to self-driving taxi services, more and more licenses are being issued, aren’t they? For example, Waymo One, the company that operates the aforementioned traffic cone-phobic robot taxis, was licensed by the California Public Utilities Commission to operate self-driving taxi services in Los Angeles and San Francisco in late 2022. So the technique works in practice, doesn’t it?

Check out this video of ABC 7 TV journalist Lyanne Melendez calling a Waymo to pick up her son from the nearby Randall Museum: the fact that the robotaxi pulled up half a block across the street to pick her up to pick up, does not bother you much in the beginning. But then the problems really start:

First, when the traffic light turns green, the taxi stops in the middle of a lane. It takes a while to contact the Waymo team to get the car up and running again. Why standing still? Nobody knows yet. Anyway, the journey continues.

The next mishap occurs when the taxi turns the wrong way and wants to drop Melendez off in front of a complete stranger’s house… commenting that the museum is “a five minute walk”. “On foot” in this case means climbing a steep hill densely covered with cacti and succulents. Once again, the assistance team (not robots, but real, living people) is called in and advises the customer to get the car moving again so that it can reorient itself. The taxi then drives around the block to drop Melendez in front of the same building.

Sure, Melendez could now—Indiana Jones style—make his way through the jungle up the cliff to the back of the museum. But “what about people who are physically disabled” (particularly the people for whom self-driving cars are designed to help the most)? At the end of the video, you can see Melendez finally driving her own car, the relatively easy route, to pick up her son from the main entrance of the Randall Museum. The conclusion of the self-test is: next time I’ll do it myself!

But the problem is much bigger than the anger caused here by a mother who is late to pick up her child from a school trip. Not only the passengers of the respective robocars are affected. Self-driving taxis have recently disrupted public transport, blocked emergency services and caused traffic congestion in the city. To put it mildly, the residents of San Francisco are already tired of serving as a test laboratory for semi-finished products of new technologies.

Oh yes: In Phoenix, where two years ago Robotaxi couldn’t be caught by the breakdown service? How is it going there?
Um… well: