According to headlines this morning, San Francisco will experiment with driverless taxis. I think it’s a great idea!
I was a Seattle cab driver for five years, from May 1982 to May 1987. While I have a lot of interesting memories of that time, I think it would have been better had I not been in the cars. In fact, after I crashed six different cabs, I made a deal with the Department of Licensing that I wouldn’t crash anymore if they would just replace my driver’s license promptly with a state ID. Which they did. I was so relieved.
I don’t quite understand how the driverless cabs would work. I assume customers will have to set up a ride in advance the way people do with Uber and Lyft now. Will there be a chatbot in the car so you can talk to the driver if you’re so inclined? I would like a mellow conversation with a taxi robot to take my mind off the fact that I’m getting a ride from a CAR WITH NO DRIVER!
How bad could it be? Well, one story I read said that the company supplying the driverless cars to San Fran hasn’t finished programming them to deal with every contingency. Yikes. So does that mean they’re going to drive like I did and crash six times in five years?
They also say that the cars occasionally get confused, lost and just freeze up in the middle of intersections. When I was driving cabs, I had moments like that.
There was a time when a car was on my left — in a left-turn-only lane — and I was in a left-turn-permitted lane. We were supposed to turn into two different lanes of the cross street. My first hint that it wasn’t going to go well was that the car to my left wasn’t signaling left. Sure enough, it went straight ahead and hit a curbed island with what must have been a bone-jolting bounce. I got a good tip for hitting the brakes. My passenger liked that I didn’t just drive into the side of the other car. But I would have preferred to just remain stopped there in the intersection, breathing deeply and forgoing the tip.
Another time there were torrential rains that flooded an intersection near the Seattle Center with a foot of water. There wouldn’t have been any problem fording that pond with my three passengers except that there was gridlock on the cross street, blocking my way. I waited for two light cycles for the gridlock to clear but it could not because there was a big station wagon in the way. What was really galling was the station wagon had room to pull up so I could get by. I honked my horn repeatedly, but the driver of the station wagon had no clues what the honking was all about.
Well, if my cab had been driverless there would be no way out of the impasse, and the passengers would have had to get out of the cab and wade away. But no. There was a driver. Me. Guess what got us through that intersection? I got out, waded through the water to the station wagon, pounded on the window and told the driver to move their car up and do it now. I think I broke their reverie. They looked shocked and surprised that I was even there standing next to them in a foot of water. But they did move, and we got on our way. It took hours for my shoes and socks to dry out after that.
Speaking of impasses, Donald Trump is playing a game of chicken with the GOP establishment. The GOP is demanding that any participant of the GOP presidential debate later this month has to agree to pledge that they will support whoever is chosen to be the party’s nominee at next year’s convention. Trump is refusing to make the pledge. Clearly he thinks the party will flinch because he’s so very important to them. As of this writing, the party isn’t flinching. I hope it stands its ground and bars Trump unless he caves.
I don’t really see why Trump wouldn’t agree to the pledge. When has he ever kept a promise before?
Dr. Wes is the Real Change Circulation Specialist, but, in addition to his skills with a spreadsheet, he writes this weekly column about whatever recent going-ons caught his attention. Dr. Wes has contributed to the paper since 1994. Curious about his process or have a response to one of his columns? Connect with him at [email protected].
Read more of the Aug. 16-22, 2023 issue.