Sneaking out for a New Year’s Day walk around Land’s End, I pulled up next to a Waymo (formerly Google Car) driverless car near Civic Center. Yes, there was a safety driver in the car but I could see he did not have his hands on the steering wheel at the stop and did not have his hands on the steering wheel as it moved to turn the car to bear left after the stop. The Waymo vehicle is kind of cool looking and I do know what Waymo means, but does everybody else? Whose idea, when approving the pilot project authority to operate this way for Waymo and a number of its competitors to allow the “driverless” aspects of the car not to be marked on the exterior. After all, don’t we want to know who is a student driver and don’t we give student drivers some space as well as some grace? And shouldn’t we have the option to move away from this experiment, if we so choose?
Missouri State of Mind 