Driverless Cars Hit Texas, Here’s A Look At My Experience In One

When I went to visit my friend in California she had just got off the waitlist to ride in the driverless cars or autonomous vehicles.

Senate Bill 2205, which took effect in September 2017, set the ground rules to regulate AVs in the state of Texas. Cities in Texas cannot regulate autonomous vehicles.

By law, autonomous vehicles must be inspected and licensed, but the procedures can be different from those for regular cars.

While Cruise has suspended its vehicles nationwide after just launching in Austin and Houston, there are still a lot of other companies offering it. Cruise operates about 50 cars in Austin and just launched a fleet in Houston and is now suspending all of its operations including right here in Texas.

So the one we actually used was Waymo which is Google's autonomous driving sister company. It was a Jaguar car that picked us up and had my friend's initials at the top of the car so we knew it was ours.

Waymo is currently in Phoenix, Arizona, and San Francisco, CA. They are also testing their services in Los Angeles, Austin, and Bellevue, Washington, US.

So how does it work? The car is equipped with sensors — cameras, radar, and lidar (light detection and ranging) — that provide a complete view of the world around it. It also uses GPS to track its location. The data from these sensors feed the car’s artificial intelligence brain in real time, enabling it to make decisions such as choosing a route and identifying traffic lights, road signals, and objects.

You can see here in my ride you can see the little dots, those are people walking around us, crazy right? You will be able to see it better in the video below.

All in all, we all felt safe and only road in it about an hour. It is definitely cool and I can't believe technology has come this far.

Here is a look at our experience.