Fully driverless cars could be months away

I&#x27;ve always been a big proponent of self-driving cars, but only because I imagined them as fully autonomous. A fleet of self-driving cars that rely on being backed by, essentially, a call center, sounds like a nightmare.<p>&quot;When Waymo tested in Phoenix earlier this year, drivers sometimes had to take over the wheel to prevent the cars from holding up traffic because it took too long for humans in the command center to answer the cars’ requests for help.&quot;

Fully driverless cars are here today, for that matter. But if you want want tamperproof driverless cars that perform well under adverse conditions and are thoroughly tested, then you&#x27;re going to have to wait a lot longer than &quot;months&quot;.<p>I think this snippet is pretty telling: &quot;Waymo chose the Phoenix area for its favorable weather, its wide, well-maintained streets, and <i>the relative lack of pedestrians</i>.&quot; (Emphasis mine.) Probably wise, but I&#x27;m sure they&#x27;ve already carefully calculated the risk&#x2F;return vs pedestrian fatalities and are coming out ahead.

…if ‘fully’ means ‘remotely operated, when the going gets tough’, such as, I guess, in bad weather (rare in Phoenix), or when there is a lot of traffic in one place, times when demand for taxis is highest.

This is something you should never hear about a product which is life critical that it works correctly:<p>&quot;Efrati reports that Waymo CEO John Krafcik faces pressure from his boss, Google co-founder and Alphabet CEO Larry Page, to transform Waymo&#x27;s impressive self-driving technology into a shipping product.&quot;<p>Combined with releasing that product in the area with the least consumer and safety protections:<p>&quot;Another important factor was the legal climate. Arizona has some of the nation&#x27;s most permissive laws regarding self-driving vehicles.&quot;<p>So the TL;DR is that someone has been pressured to rush a product to release in an area with few safety regulations that could cause a lot of harm if it malfunctions.