Way to Go

First step when it comes to an interview: get there. This time, the ride is the story – and we’re inviting you to come along for the ride. Join Mishpacha’s intrepid reporter, on assignment in Los Angeles, as she (nervously) hops into a Waymo robotaxi for a test drive.

Sitting in the front seat of a super-cool, late-model Jaguar performance SUV should have been a thrilling moment — not a terrifying one.

As it happens, I’ve always considered Jags to be the most beautiful cars on the road, so going for a ride to the Santa Monica Pier in a stunning, all-electric white model shouldn’t have had me ready to say some extremely heartfelt Tehillim. Nope, what classified the drive I was about to experience as a potentially petrifying journey was that there was only one person in that car: me.

And I wasn’t behind the steering wheel.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Waymo, a ride-hailing service that offers just about everything you might want in a taxi, with one teeny, tiny exception — a flesh-and-blood driver. Piloted by all kinds of technological wizardry, Waymo takes the human element completely out of the equation as it navigates roads, stops at red lights, merges into traffic, and deals with the zillions of other nuances that are part and parcel of car travel.