Hutzell: While Maryland idles on Waymo, I went for a driverless ride in San Francisco

The back seat of a Waymo Jaguar I-PACE is plush, snug and comfortable.

Buckle up, press “start ride” on the display screen set between the two front seats, and the driverless car smoothly accelerates into traffic.

No matter how prepared you are for the experience, seeing the wheel turn this way and that without the touch of human hands is disquieting.

“You know, people get in there and they say that it feels like magic when the car pulls off, and the steering wheel just starts turning and it accelerates and gets you to a location,“ said Anthony Perez, Waymo’s Northeast policy manager.

On a recent trip to San Francisco, my wife and I explored the city with the AI ride service. Three years after it started, Waymo cars are a common sight — yet still new enough that residents express surprise at seeing five or six driving in a cluster.

Waymo wants to come to Maryland. State lawmakers rejected the company’s bid for regulations to allow driverless ride service this year, but the company will return to the State House in 2027.

So those electric Jags dotted with revolving bug-eye sensors continue to map Baltimore. The company is doing the same in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and New York.

“I think we’ll have to keep at it, and I think we’re here for the long run in Baltimore, and that comes with continuing to do the work,” Perez said.

After four days in San Francisco, it became clear that driverless vehicles are coming, whether you trust the AI driving them or not.

We loaded the app during the taxi ride from the airport to our hotel.

Just like rideshare companies, Waymo’s software lets you pick the ride and the destination. We plugged in Tadich Grill, the oldest restaurant in California.

The Jag, tricked out with what looks like a rooftop flying saucer, pulled up in a quiet alley a few steps around the corner from our hotel’s front doors.

That saucer is a custom sensor suite that serves as the vehicle’s eyes and ears, housing LiDAR, cameras and radar. It’s connected to those bug eyes on all four corners, plus the front and back.

A revolving light atop the sensor package blinked my initials, telling me which robot car was mine. The app unlocked the doors and we slipped inside.

And there was that feeling that something wasn’t right — excitement, but also trepidation. Magic is a good word for it, but in a darker-than-Disney sense.

“I’ve also heard people who say that just a few minutes later, or maybe after the first ride, it’s just routine, you know?” Perez said. “It just feels like normal.”

The driving was excellent, the kind of confident navigation through traffic that comes from experience on crowded streets. That’s because Waymo’s AI uses what it learned from 2 million miles on the road to drive an individual trip.

The display screen shows what Waymo sees around it as glowing silhouettes: cars, pedestrians, even dogs. An illuminated path through it all is reassuring.

There were unfortunate surprises. Robot cars stop where their AI determines it’s safe, so they can seem confused to a human expecting a direct route.

After a Giants game at Oracle Park, we had to walk 15 minutes from the crowd to catch our ride.

Once we got near the meetup spot, it was frustrating — on a dark street in a strange city after a couple of beers — to sort out where we were supposed to stand.

The app warned that the car would only wait two minutes, so I sprinted to the passenger door once I spotted that glowing “RH.”

Waymo then struggled to get us to Biscuits and Blues, a jazz spot where a friend was playing. It looped a figure 8 around several blocks, giving us a scare that the car was taking us someplace else.

“There’s just a lot of inputs that go into that decision-making process to make sure that we’re dropping you off in the most ideal location,” Perez said.

We were joined that night by friends from Crofton, who shared our hesitation. Driving San Francisco’s hills can be intimidating, and doing it in a robot car added to that feeling.

Concerns about safety and job losses were the big reasons Maryland hit the brakes on Waymo. A child was struck in Santa Monica, California. The robot cars passed stopped school buses in Atlanta and Austin, Texas.

A week after we left San Francisco, many had to be towed when the batteries ran out in jammed Independence Day traffic.

Perez’s answers on these issues weren’t wholly satisfying.

Since Waymo started in San Francisco, company surveys show a 45% increase in trust. The reason? Safety.

The company says 30% of respondents believe it’s safer than a human driver, and 16% say it’s safer than a rideshare. Of course, it’s their survey.

Waymo’s record is better than other ride services, he said, but there’s no sign roads are getting safer, which is one of the technology’s most significant promises.

On the loss of driver jobs, Perez said what disrupters always say: More rides are good for everyone.

“We want to expand the pie, not necessarily take a slice of the pie,” he said.

Driverless vehicles will create as well as devour jobs. But it’s not a 1-to-1 trade. Qualified humans will service and supervise the cars. Most won’t be unemployed drivers.

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, owns Waymo. It is a data company, so how it shares my information is a concern. I don’t want fish ads after visiting the aquarium.

Maryland has consumer protections, Perez said. It can’t use my ride data for advertising.

Driverless vehicles are coming. It’s inevitable.

The companies are too big, the technology too promising, the tax revenue too large, and the potential gains in congestion, safety and pollution too enticing to say no for long.

It’s not the robot apocalypse. At least, I hope not.

Lawmakers need to get regulations right and prepare for the consequences.

The future is coming, and it doesn’t have a driver.