SAN ANTONIO – They naturally capture attention as they cruise along San Antonio streets, cars with no one behind the wheel.
Several Waymo fully autonomous vehicles, lately, however, have been the focus of videos posted online for losing their way.
In one instance in March, a parent captured images of one of the vehicles heading the wrong way in an Alamo Heights school zone.
In another case, a stalled Waymo vehicle had been heading in the wrong direction at a fast-food restaurant’s drive-through just north of downtown.
The autonomous cars’ parent company emailed KSAT 12 News following those incidents, saying its vehicles were essentially safer than human drivers.
The statement said Waymo cars travel more than four million miles each week and have “13 times fewer serious injury crashes, six times fewer crashes with airbag deployment, and 13 times fewer crashes with injuries to pedestrians.”
In an effort to put the theory to the test, KSAT 12 News took a ride to and from San Antonio International Airport with a local driving expert to grade the driverless cars’ driving skills.
“As the car is moving, what I want to see is how it’s changing lanes and if it’s doing the proper signaling,” said Marc Alonso, owner of Ayala & Associates Driving School and a certified administrator of state driving tests.
After entering the car, Alonso was immediately impressed by the technology, including screens that show the car’s movement and the traffic around it in real time.
He also pointed out safety features, such as a voice reminding passengers to buckle up.
Once the car hit the road, his reaction became more mixed.
Alonso noticed that the vehicle took a lengthy route to the airport from downtown that seemed to intentionally avoid highways and railroad tracks.
“It’s moving into a turning lane. It did have its blinker on,” he said, pointing out what the car did right.
Soon, though, Alonso noticed a few moves that he says would have added up to demerits for a human driver taking a road test.
“It looks like the car is a little bit too close to the car in front,” he said. “I would never let our students get that close and in a driving test, that could count against you.”
Just shy of half an hour, the car pulled up to the curb at the airport.
Alonso said in spite of a few mistakes and a close call with a large truck, the Waymo’s driving skills did make the grade.
“I would probably give it a high B,” he said.
A different Waymo vehicle didn’t fare as well on the return trip downtown.
Alonso pointed out how it aggressively went through a yellow light at one point and later failed to stop at a stop sign.
“By law, if that had been a human driver, it could’ve been cited for running a stop sign,” he said. “This (car) gets a fail.”
Alonso also wonders how well the cars will react to certain scenarios, such as facing more than one obstacle at a time on the road or navigating through severe weather.
“How’s it going to react to those big puddles in the middle of the street? And how does the radar react to that and know?” he asked. “When you have a human driver, it knows how to react to that.”
Alonso said he is hopeful that, in time, the technology will improve, and those concerns he has will be addressed.
More Waymo coverage on KSAT: