The operators of the vehicles have permission to operate 24/7 across the city except on freeways.
SAN FRANCISCO: This California summer, passers-by on the streets of San Francisco can be divided into two camps: blasé locals who are used to a parade of moving cars with no drivers or gobsmacked tourists fumbling for their smartphones to capture this long-promised vision of the future.
“For the first two thirds of the trip, maybe 20 minutes or so, I was freaking out and then all of a sudden it just sort of felt normal, which is weird, because it wasn’t normal!” “Percussion,” the vehicle’s name, arrived quickly. But instead of taking the direct route, which would have led to a supermarket in less than five minutes, the trip followed a long, unexplained detour.
Twenty minutes and a dozen questions later, Percussion finally arrived at its destination, but parked quite far from the store, probably because of the roadworks.“It’s very peaceful. There’s no chatter. There’s not a weird radio station playing random music,” he observed.Road rage free“The advantage that they have over human drivers is that they’re cautious, which can be really annoying to other drivers,” she said.