Join Mishpacha’s reporter on assignment in Los Angeles, as she hops into a Waymo robotaxi for a test drive

Photos: Levi BH Studio

First step when it comes to an interview: get there. This time, the ride is the story - and we’re inviting you to come along for the ride. Join Mishpacha’s intrepid reporter, on assignment in Los Angeles, as she (nervously) hops into a Waymo robotaxi for a test drive.

Sitting in the front seat of a super-cool, late-model Jaguar performance SUV should have been a thrilling moment — not a terrifying one.

As it happens, I’ve always considered Jags to be the most beautiful cars on the road, so going for a ride to the Santa Monica Pier in a stunning, all-electric white model shouldn’t have had me ready to say some extremely heartfelt Tehillim. Nope, what classified the drive I was about to experience as a potentially petrifying journey was that there was only one person in that car: me.

And I wasn’t behind the steering wheel.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Waymo, a ride-hailing service that offers just about everything you might want in a taxi, with one teeny, tiny exception — a flesh-and-blood driver. Piloted by all kinds of technological wizardry, Waymo takes the human element completely out of the equation as it navigates roads, stops at red lights, merges into traffic, and deals with the zillions of other nuances that are part and parcel of car travel.

That doesn’t sound scary, does it?

Oh, wait. It does. It absolutely, positively does.

So I’m sure you can imagine how conflicted I was as I sat there on a random side street in Beverly Hills, wondering if I should press the button that would let Waymo loose on the streets of Los Angeles.

Should I say a kapitel or two of Tehillim first? Maybe Tefillas Haderech?

I wasn’t going very far — less than eight miles — and I definitely wasn’t leaving city limits. But surely a prayer that is all about getting safely to your destination couldn’t hurt, could it?

Enough procrastinating, I told myself. Pretending I was confident and in control, I took that leap of faith and jumped off the proverbial cliff: I pressed the rectangular blue button that sets Waymo in motion.

I’m pretty sure I didn’t scream as we pulled smoothly away from the curb and started heading southwest toward the water, or at least that’s the way I’d like to remember of that afternoon. (Thankfully, Waymo can’t set the record straight and tell the world that in fact, all of Beverly Hills heard me shrieking in terror.)