A Waymo car drives up a hill in San Francisco, Sept. 4, 2025.Jeff Chiu/The Associated Press
Our Waymo robotaxi methodically carried my brother and I toward North Beach neighbourhood on a broody afternoon. As a kid, I’d imagined driverless cars. Now, what once seemed impossible had become inevitable on the streets of San Francisco. Give the robot its praise. The Waymo all-electric Jaguar I-Pace dealt effortlessly with dozens of variables including pedestrians, cyclists and drivers. Its interior seemed more like a spa than an automobile. Soothing music played, the seats were leather, the screens crystal clear, all these factors conjured up no doubt by battalions of tech workers. I was dazzled.
And yet, as hypnotized as I was by the robotaxi, three words kept turning over in my mind.
“Think of KitKat.”
KitKat was a bodega cat (one that lives in a convenience store). On Oct. 27, KitKat was run over and killed by a Waymo robotaxi. Waymo told The Guardian, “While our vehicle was stopped to pick up passengers, a nearby cat darted under our vehicle as it was pulling away.”
A well-known denizen of San Francisco’s Mission District dubbed “the mayor of 16th Street,” KitKat arrived there six years ago and was often found at the Randa’s Market. Following the accident, the Mission District went into deep mourning. San Francisco city supervisor Jackie Fielder held a press conference in which she praised KitKat for being friendly, brave and “deeply rooted in his community.”
The Guardian reported that she plans to “introduce legislation to allow counties to decide whether they will permit the operation of autonomous vehicles.” One of the family members that owns Randa’s Market issued a memecoin honouring KitKat’s legacy and was dismayed when profit-seekers issued their own copycat KitKat memecoins hoping to cash in on KitKat’s demise.
A cat named after a candy bar that you can break into pieces, had been broken into pieces by a driverless robotaxi. The irony was lost on everyone.
It was not the only traffic fatality to occur recently in the Mission District. In September, a driver had been killed instantly when his van crashed into a building. No press conference was held; there were no calls to ban vans from the Mission District. Apparently, the driver was not named after a candy bar.
Try as I might, I was too wowed by my robotaxi experience to conjure up a drop of salty water to my eyes. We refer to the ability to see the future. There is another less celebrated but just as valuable skill: the ability to recognize the past; to realize that your world is gone, replaced by a strange new one that is material without yet being fully real. That was my Waymo robotaxi experience.
In 2023, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), which regulates taxi and ride-hail services, voted to allow Waymo and Cruise to offer paid fully autonomous ride-hailing services day and night in San Francisco. There was no limit on the number of robotaxis they could put on the road. Two years later, the robotaxis have learned a lot.
Andrew Clark and his brother take a ride in a Waymo robotaxi in San Francisco.Andrew Clark/The Globe and Mail
I’ve written extensively on self-driving cars, and my take has always been that they could not be worse at driving than us. As of January, 2025, according to a Waymo study, its cars have driven 56.7 million miles in four American cities: Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Austin. Compared to human drivers, the Waymo driverless vehicles had:
- 92 per cent fewer crashes with injuries to pedestrians
- 82 per cent fewer crashes with injuries to cyclists
- 82 per cent fewer crashes with injuries to motorcyclists
- 96 per cent fewer injury-involving intersection crashes. This was attributed to the Waymo Driver’s ability to detect and appropriately respond to vehicles running a red light.
- 85 per cent fewer crashes with suspected serious or worse injuries
Robotaxis don’t get distracted, don’t drink and drive and don’t get road rage. They just drive and, as the technology gets more advanced, they will eventually – by and large – replace us. As we drove ourselves back from San Francisco to San Jose, my brother and I discussed the robotaxi.
“You think they’d have an easier time on the highway,” he said.
As if on cue, the following day Waymo announced that it will now take passengers on freeways in three major U.S. cities, San Francisco, Phoenix and Los Angeles, and have its robotaxis pick up and drop off at the San Jose airport.
Of course, these locations don’t get much snow. It will take a long time before we see robotaxis up north. Snow, ice, low sun angles and long dark nights are a challenge for all drivers but an even bigger obstacle for robotaxis, even ones like Waymo which use lidar, radar and cameras. Waymo needs to harvest cold-weather driving data before it can safely carry riders in northern climates. That means convincing governments to allow them to test in their cities. That will be tricky.
I took an Uber from the airport to my house in Toronto. My driver was a lot like my Waymo robotaxis. He didn’t talk to me or laugh at my jokes. The highway into the city was its usual organized chaos. When the robotaxis take over, they will move in straight, orderly inhuman lines and I knew that we would all miss the messy past.
I thought of KitKat.
A Waymo Jaguar I-Pace drives down the streets of San Francisco.Andrew Clark/The Globe and Mail