Self driving - the future is here!

I had my first opportunity to ride in a self driving car this week in San Fransisco. It was a surreal experience. The car was a google waymo and it was driving itself on the busy and chaotic streets of the city completely without a driver. The entire experience was very accessible for me as a blind person. I requested the ride through the waymo app on my phone and the car arrived at my location in a few minutes. It had to stop a little ways behind me because there were other cars parked in front of me. There was a find my car button in the app, which was super helpful in guiding me to where the car was. There was also the option to show some text on a screen on the car in a background color of my choice to help me locate the car. While I am blind, my wife who can see a little bit found this very helpful in spotting the car, and more importantly, in being sure this was our vehicle. Once we got in the car and pressed start, the car gave us some security tips because it was aware this was our first ride from the app. Then, it started driving, and it was a little unnerving to have no one in the driver’s seat. It drove like a pro through the very busy streets with pedestrians randomly crossing the road, the cable cars and the generally complex traffic patterns of the city.

I could sit back and even put on some bollywood music on the car’s sound system.

When we got to our destination, the car informed us about where we were relative to our destination as in we will need to go to the left after we got out. Again, this was helpful in the accessibility of the overall experience.

I wish they would also add the ability to talk to the car in natural language for simple commands like can you drop me a block ahead instead or can we stop on a starbucks on the way.

What google has done with the overall experience accessibility and the awesome feeling of independence I had on taking the ride was truely amazing.

I think the future of self driving cars is here and I am excited to see how it will change the world for people with disabilities.