Are Waymos Driving More Like Humans?

The Journal.

The Wall Street Journal

Business News, Daily News, News

4.2 • 5.8K Ratings

🗓️ 19 January 2026

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this mini-episode of The Journal, WSJ's Katherine Bindley investigates a recent change in behavior among San Francisco’s ubiquitous Waymos, the self-driving robotaxis. Suddenly, the cars are behaving less like deferential drivers and more like New York cabbies. Jessica Mendoza hosts. Further Listening: - How Waymo Won Over San Francisco - The Future of Self-Driving Cars Is Here Sign up for WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	My colleague Katie Bindley lives in San Francisco.
0:08.6	She's a tech reporter and therefore has taken a special joy in observing Waymo's,
0:13.7	the self-driving robot taxis that are all over the city.
0:17.4	I was lucky enough to have Waymo's training kind of all around my apartment for a while.
0:24.7	And there were a lot of nights when, yeah, I would be driving home or heading somewhere,
0:29.9	and it would just be me and like four Waymo's out on the road.
0:35.3	I love how you said I'm lucky enough to be in a neighborhood where Waymoes are trained.
0:40.9	Is that really like a stroke of luck?
0:43.7	Well, I mean, it was really entertaining.
0:46.1	Like I remember one night I was driving home and it was like this extremely foggy, you know, kind of moody night.
0:52.6	And I pulled up at a stoplight next to a Waymo.
0:56.5	There were no passengers in it.
0:58.3	And all the windows were down.
1:00.4	And they were blaring the song Creep.
1:04.0	Do you guys remember that song?
1:05.8	Like, So are creep.
1:07.4	Yeah.
1:08.1	Yeah.
1:08.2	Yeah.
1:08.2	Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The car was just listening to TLC.
1:15.9	The car was just listening to TLC?
1:20.0	Yeah.
	...

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