The Technology 202: A ride in a self-driving car shows the U.S. is far from ready to give robocars free rein

To me, the San Francisco streets seemed deserted. To my self-driving car, they were full of hazards. In mid-March, just as the coronavirus outbreak started to change the world as we knew it, I took a ride in an autonomous vehicle through the narrow and winding, topsy-turvy streets of downtown San Francisco -- from the hairpin turns of Lombard Street to the steep hills surrounding Coit Tower and the famed Embarcadero waterfront. Even with tens of thousands of workers staying put as the first work-from-home orders hit, in the back of a Toyota Highlander piloted by autonomous vehicle start-up Zoox, I started to become hyper-aware of the circus of hazards robocars encounter on a daily basis. There was a cyclist or skateboarder in the blind spot.