My son is 16 and just got his driver's permit. We live in Mountain View, and so driving with Waymo vehicles is basically part of life here - I pass by at least

My son is 16 and just got his driver's permit. We live in Mountain View, and so driving with Waymo vehicles is basically part of life here - I pass by at least 2 or 3 on a daily basis. They also cruise by the front of my house quite often, as I assume it's on some sort of route. Trying to teach your kid how to drive, while behind an autonomous vehicle is a great way to see how erratic and unpredictable they really are. They don't act like humans at all. As an experienced driver, I just sort of adjusted as if Waymo vehicles were bad drivers. But to a novice driver trying to keep a safe distance, predict what it's going to do next, and adjust accordingly - it's a challenge. What's worse is that they almost always drive too slow (read: the speed limit), which creates chaos as impatient drivers (read: everyone else) tries to maneuver around the vehicles. Imagine you're just learning how to drive, a vehicle in front of you is driving at an abnormal pace, slowing for stoplights way before necessary, wandering around the lane (especially before turning), and doing other odd things. Meanwhile, all the other drivers around you are passing quickly, cutting that vehicle off, and generally acting like morons. The worst situation is being at a 4-way stop with Waymo vehicles. I taught my son that it's pretty normal to make brief eye contact with other drivers - or at least turn his head to face the driver that he thinks should be the next to go - which helps ensure that there aren't any weird stop/start problems. Guess what you can't do to an autonomous vehicle? No driver means that there's no real way to gauge what they're going to do. (The person behind the "wheel" usually has a blank yet terrified expression of, 'please don't kill me', rather than any real information.) So, yeah, Waymo vehicles are weird. It's the future, though, so my son is learning how to deal with these cars the way I learned how to deal with icy roads growing up in New Hampshire. I don't really appreciate being a living beta-tester though... Happily, Waymo's record is much better than Tesla's and Uber's as they haven't killed anyone yet. Yet.