Uber and Lyft Drivers Have Some Advice for Autonomous Vehicles Set to Swarm the

Take a walk around San Francisco this summer and you’ll see something curious: Jaguar SUVs and Chevrolet hatchbacks driving around with no one inside. The ghostly vehicles are owned and operated by Google spinoff Waymo and General Motors subsidiary Cruise. Soon there will likely be a lot more of them, because last week, the companies received a state regulator’s permission to operate paid robotaxi services anywhere in the city around the clock, after years and billions spent on testing and development.

San Francisco’s 10,000-odd Uber and Lyft drivers have already gotten used to sharing the road with trainee machines designed to make their work obsolete. From that front-row seat they have watched the robots trigger on-road drama that has angered city officials, as the self-driving vehicles have blocked fire trucks, emergency vehicles, and city buses, and caused jams by “freezing” in traffic.

WIRED spoke to 10 drivers who work in San Francisco about what they’ve seen of the robot taxis so far and how they expect them to handle the rigors of public service—vomit splatters and all. Ride-hail drivers have watched with amazement, disgust, and a “who cares?” attitude often found among those accustomed to the job precarity and algorithmic whims of platforms such as Uber and Lyft. And they offered up a bunch of advice to the newbie robots driving alongside them. Some was friendly, some not at all.

Sometimes You Gotta Bend the Rules

Robotaxis are generally programmed to follow the letter of the law—Waymo spokesperson Julia Ilina says its cars are designed to display “polite, considerate, and defensive driving.” But ride-hail drivers say that sometimes the rules of the road need to be fudged. “Rideshare passengers are spoiled. They’re used to getting picked up right where they are,” says Alex Popovics, who has been driving for Uber and Lyft in San Francisco for five years. When forced to choose between briefly blocking a driveway (technically a ticketable offense) and loading passengers in the middle of traffic, he’ll sometimes opt for the former. Human drivers make trade-offs like this constantly, he says, whereas the AI-powered cars he’s observed seem less flexible.

Sometimes lawbreaking is the only option. Ride-hail driver Glauco Marinho recalls picking up passengers on New Year’s Eve near San Francisco’s City Hall. A street was closed for a party, requiring drivers to make a technically forbidden U-turn. Marinho had to make his around a robotaxi idling in the middle of the road, hazard lights flashing, apparently paralyzed by its own lawfulness. “It was creating some chaos because there were a lot of drunk people walking back and forth, so there wasn’t a lot of space to maneuver around the stopped car,” he says.

Ilina, the Waymo spokesperson, acknowledged that being a good driver occasionally means being a scofflaw. The company’s robotaxis might sometimes, she says, cross a double yellow line in order to maintain a safe distance from other road users, including cyclists.

Good Luck Keeping That Upholstery Clean

Being a good ride-hail driver requires being an expert at reading not just roads, but people. After Popovics spent four hours trying to scrub projectile vomit off the ceiling of his car, he hired a cleaning service and started paying closer attention to passengers’ intoxication levels. Now, after greeting each passenger, he asks them how they’re doing. “Not because I want to know about them,” he says. “I want to hear them speak to see if they’re slurring.” And he’s always equipped with plastic bags, in case someone becomes queasy.

Robotaxis summoned by app have cameras and two-way voice links inside, but the cars and their overseers can’t reliably gauge how intoxicated or sick a person is. Earlier this year, San Francisco officials said the companies called emergency services three times after riders fell asleep and could not be roused remotely. And vomit is just one of the body fluids ride-hail drivers have to worry about. Gabe Ets-Hokin, a San Francisco driver who writes about driving for Uber and Lyft for the website Rideshare Guy, thinks driverless cars are “purpose built” for sex work. Based on his experience, even having a human driver at the wheel doesn’t always prevent determined passengers from doing what they’d like.