CAROLINE GRAHAM: Why I feel safer in LA’s driverless robot cars than I do behind the wheel of my own vehicle… and it’s not just because I can do my lippy without using the rear-view mirror

It is hard to describe why but it never fails to bring a Cheshire Cat-sized grin to my face. Even though self-driving cars are now ubiquitous on the streets of my home city of Los Angeles – and are changing the way people get around American cities – you never quite get over the thrill of sitting in the passenger seat of a driverless vehicle.

The engine purrs, as if by magic the steering wheel turns and out the car pulls, into an autonomous future.

The biggest player in the self-driving industry here is Waymo, the dial-a-ride service run by Alphabet, the Silicon Valley behemoth that owns Google.

And having taken over LA, San Francisco and Phoenix, Arizona, last month, Alphabet announced plans to introduce robotaxis to the streets of London early next year.

In a statement the company said: ‘Hello London! Great news. We’re bringing our fully autonomous ride-hailing service across the pond where we intend to offer rides – with no human behind the wheel – in 2026.’

The Waymo app was only made available in LA last November. Since then its fleet of white, electric I-PACE Jaguars have become part of the street furniture, turning heads as they glide past.

Just as Uber revolutionised the way we take taxis, so Waymo is taking us further down the road to fully driverless cities, though so far it has yet to alleviate Tinsel Town’s notorious traffic problem.

It is hoped that will change as the cars, having only been allowed in certain built-up areas, have now been given the green light to navigate the city’s notorious freeway choke points.

Simpler ways to get around the city, which has a sparse metro system, are sorely needed ahead of next year’s World Cup and the Olympics in 2028.

LA lifers like me are reminded of the futuristic joy robotaxis elicit when an out-of-towner visits.

‘It feels like we’re in a sci-fi movie,’ my girlfriend said as she filmed Waymos zipping past as well as the super-cute delivery robots, which also abound, trundling on sidewalks, delivering Uber Eats takeaways.

But she soon asked: ‘Do you feel safe inside a driverless taxi?’

I didn’t in 2023 when I wrote a scathing piece about robot cars bringing chaos to San Francisco, the city closest to Silicon Valley where these things were first tested. One had ploughed headfirst into the back of a packed city bus. Another drove through police crime tape and straight at an officer who helplessly held out his arms and commanded it to ‘stay’ – a command it ignored, forcing him to jump out of the way.

Waymos were also bringing entire city blocks to a halt by getting stuck behind traffic.

Yet technology has advanced at a rapid clip. Today Waymo claims its vehicles have 79 per cent fewer accidents involving airbag deployment than human drivers.

A Waymo report in September estimated its fleet had completed 96 million miles of driving across US cities in June.

Over that distance, according to US transport safety figures, human drivers would have 159 ‘airbag-triggering’ crashes. Waymo had only 34 airbag crashes.

There have been no Waymo fatalities. Well, apart from a cat – more of which later.

Data from every trip is fed back to the firm, so with millions of gigabytes at its disposal, the service boasts it can ‘handle everything’.

The vehicles have spinning ‘lidars’ on the roof, technical wizardry that can ‘see’ 300 metres in every direction using a combination of radar, sensors and cameras.

The information is fed into an AI ‘brain’, which can predict what pedestrians, cyclists and other drivers might do next.

So, yes, I do feel safe in these cars – more so than I do driving my own hatchback runaround.

It is also a plus for women, particularly after a few drinks late at night, who feel apprehensive about being driven in a taxi by a man they do not know.

I remember being so terrified by a Russian driver who was seemingly on drugs as he drove recklessly from LAX airport that I begged him to pull over and was nearly in tears when he refused for several miles.

Ubers and other taxi apps have made such experiences rare, as drivers have visible profiles, journeys are recorded and no cash is exchanged. But automated cabs go one step further by removing the driver. So how do they work?

You call them on the app and it takes the same time as an Uber to arrive. The price is similar, too, going up and down according to demand.

It’s easy to tell which Waymo is yours, as your initials are lit up on the top of the car. For this article, I called a Waymo in Beverly Hills. It came in a couple of minutes.

Just like Uber, you track the approaching car on the app. When you get in, the car has a screen in the front and back that says: ‘Welcome, Caroline.’ Waymo will wait for five minutes once you get in, the time ticking down as soon as you open the door. An alarm reminds you to put on a seatbelt. You can pre-programme the music you listen to using apps like Spotify or just accept what is playing in the car, which I tend to do.

The cars are usually clean – although one I took last week had unsightly smears on the windscreen – and eerily quiet.

They move with precision. A screen shows you pedestrians, other cars and things like traffic lights. As the Waymo pulls away from the kerb it feels like it’s being driven by an invisible hand. My hands are put to far better use applying lippy in the back seat.

I had ordered it to drop me at Rodeo Drive, the heart of Beverly Hills, which is always packed with tourists – more so now Christmas decorations have gone up.

A Bentley stopped abruptly in front of my Waymo as we neared Gucci. Had I been driving, I’d have slammed on the brakes.

But the Waymo anticipated the move, slowed down, then pulled around the car, which was being driven by an older woman who was distracted by her phone.

But, as one traditional cabbie pointed out to me, the care that driverless cars take to recognise obstacles ahead and brake early could invite other road-users to take advantage of them.

Roundabouts, which are more common in the UK than the US, could prove flashpoints where Waymos struggle to pull into fast-moving traffic and where aggressive drivers cut them up, confident a driverless car will stop.

When I ordered a Waymo to take me back, I hadn’t noticed I was waiting on a kerb painted red. My approaching ride had.

‘Please move 50 feet to your south where I can safely pick you up,’ the app instructed.

I was one of the first to try Google’s prototype self-driving car in 2014 and the experience was far different to what it is today.

That looked like a VW Beetle and movements were jerky. It accidentally bumped into the kerb.

Today, so utilised have these cars become, many college-age kids no longer feel the need to get a driver’s licence, as my generation did.

A friend whose daughter has just turned 16 told me: ‘She’s never mentioned going for a driving test. She doesn’t want a car. She’s grown up in the era of Ubers and now Waymos. Her answer is: “Why do I need to learn to drive?”’

Waymo’s commercial fleet now totals more than 2,000 in cities across the US. The firm is expanding to Detroit, Las Vegas and San Diego in 2026. Miami and Washington DC will follow.

Earlier this year it started operating in Tokyo but that is still in the test phase. London and the UK are the main target now.

A source told me: ‘London has been our focus for some time. We are launching sooner in the UK than people think.

‘There are still some regulatory hurdles to get around but we’re very close to getting a deal.

‘London will be first, then major cities like Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and Edinburgh.’

Waymo’s rivals – Elon Musk’s Tesla, Chinese company Baidu and Jeff ‘Amazon’ Bezos’ Zoox – are lagging behind.

‘Alphabet has deep pockets and Waymo has access to all of Google’s data, which is a huge commercial advantage,’ said the source.

‘Waymo’s been clever, focusing on safety first, which Tesla’s been accused of trying to circumvent.

‘Waymo has Google maps, a mature, tested product. They’ve been operating at a loss but you don’t hear of that. True profit comes by dominating the market, which is where Waymo’s heading.’

The firm says it is providing more than 250,000 fully autonomous trips in LA per week, and hit 10 million lifetime trips in May.

Waymo admits ploughing £7.6 billion into its fleet but I’m told the ‘real’ figure is far higher.

But for all its impressive numbers, one dead cat remains a much-ridiculed blot on its copybook. Last month a Waymo car accidentally killed a tabby, KitKat. He was struck outside Randa’s Market, the deli and liquor store where he lived, in San Francisco.

Owner Daniel Zeiden said KitKat was ‘unequivocally adored’.

Waymo said: ‘While our vehicle stopped to pick up passengers, a nearby cat darted under our vehicle as it was pulling away.

‘We send our deepest sympathies to the cat’s owner and to the community who loved him, and we have made a donation to a local animal rights organisation.’

AI-sceptics have used the cat’s death to campaign against the ‘too rapid’ pace of change. Protesters have placed orange cones around Waymo vehicles in an attempt to paralyse them, though cars have since been programmed to manoeuvre out of cone ‘prisons’.

Their ‘sleep’ routines cause consternation too. On footage posted to X of cars lining up at a charging centre at night (to be plugged in by that most redundant of species: a human), one user said: ‘Man, this is wild. Here’s a line of Waymos blocking a public street to get charged at 3am. It’s a public safety hazard.’

To me, these problems are small compared to the advantages a driverless world can bring.

So buckle up, Britain. Autonomous cars are gliding to a kerb near you and they will do for the human driver what Henry Ford did for the coach and horse.