The World's Most Experienced Driver Can't Handle a Puddle.

Waymo's slogan is "The World's Most Experienced Driver." It says so right on the website. "Our mission: Be the world's most trusted driver." Sounds great. Sounds reassuring. Sounds like something you'd want to put your kids in. Here's what Waymo's "most experienced driver" has done in the last six months. It hit a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica during morning drop-off. A kid. Walking to school. The vehicle was going 17 miles per hour, hit the brakes, slowed to under 6 — but still struck the child. Federal regulators opened an investigation. Waymo said simulations showed a human driver wouldn't have avoided it either. Which is a hell of a thing to say about your robot when it hits a child. Then there's the school bus incident. A Waymo in Atlanta saw a school bus with its stop arm out, its crossing control arms deployed, its red lights flashing. It stopped. It paused. And then it drove around the front of the bus anyway — near disembarking students. NHTSA is investigating. The agency says the likelihood of similar incidents is high. And then, the piece de resistance. An empty Waymo in San Antonio drove into a flooded road during a thunderstorm, got swept into a creek, and floated away. Not during a hurricane. Not during a typhoon. Just a regular old Texas storm. The same flash flooding that has always happened in San Antonio. The same kind of water that every human driver in that city has been avoiding instinctively since they were 16. Waymo's robot? Drove right in.