The driver in the Chevy Suburban seemed bent on testing the Waymo robotaxi on the streets of downtown L.A. this week. Playing chicken against Silicon Valley's wheeled robot, he sharply swung into the next lane toward the Waymo. The white driverless Jaguar swerved to avoid the bigger car crossing the line and striking it. The human driver sped then ahead of the robotaxi and braked abruptly in front of it. The machine slowed in time to avoid a collision, shifted into the next lane and the Chevy moved on, ending a brief yet anxiety inducing interaction for a Los Angeles Times reporter and photographer riding in the Waymo vehicle.

The desk where I work in San Francisco overlooks Cesar Chavez Street, a four-lane thoroughfare that starts at the eastern edge of the city, in the Bayview, and runs west at a jag for about three miles. Formerly known as Army Street, it is a largely charmless artery. In recent years, owing to procrastination, distraction, or general malaise, I've often found myself staring out at it, idly watching the traffic. There is nothing very unusual to see except for the Waymo cars--white, electric Jaguar S.U.V.s, kitted out with sensors and cameras, their rooftop LIDARs spinning. Self-driving cars are not a fixture of most American cities, at least not yet.

I recently had the opportunity to take a ride in a Waymo self-driving car in Chandler, AZ. I had been looking forward to this experience, not only to see how well the technology worked but also what the experience might be like as a passenger. Upon my arrival at the Waymo facility, I had apparently approached the side of the building where the Waymo cars go at the end of their duty cycles to be refueled and inspected. As I drove in, I was more or less surrounded by incoming Waymo vehicles. I relaxed as they navigated their way around me.

Waymo might just expand its self-driving car service to southern California... eventually. The Alphabet company's cars will start mapping some Los Angeles streets this week to explore the possibility of fitting autonomous vehicles into the city's "dynamic transportation environment." The firm told Engadget that its initial effort will be limited to three cars in the downtown area and the Miracle Mile, but that still raise the possibility of seeing a modified Pacifica cruising down the boulevard. The company stressed that this isn't a definitive sign that Waymo One or similar driverless services are coming to LA. Rather, this is to gauge the viability of introducing services "one day." While LA has been open to self-driving initiatives, it's not really a hub for them -- you have to travel to the San Francisco Bay Area if you want that in California.

Waymo is still struggling to teach its self driving cars basic driving manoeuvres as it prepares to launch its self driving taxi service. 'The Waymo vans have trouble with many unprotected left turns and with merging into heavy traffic in the Phoenix area, especially on highways,' according to The Information, which says the cars have a'Zoolander' problem similar to the Ben Stiller character in the hit film, who struggled to turn left on a catwalk. It also says the vans'don't understand basic road features, such as metered red and green lights that regulate the pace of cars merging onto freeways.' The Information's story cites five unnamed sources with direct knowledge of issues Waymo has encountered during the pilot program. One Twitter user recently captured the van on video struggling to join a highway.

U.S. drivers' fears of fully autonomous (self-driving) vehicles has risen in the past several months according to a new survey by AAA. SAN FRANCISCO -- Waymo's self-driving mission is about to mushroom. The Alphabet-owned autonomous car company announced Thursday that it is significantly ramping up its partnership with Fiat Chrysler and over time will add up to 62,000 Pacifica Hybrid minivans to its fleet. That's a significant bump from a January announcement in which Waymo, which started out as Google's self-driving car project in 2009, said it would add "thousands" of new FCA minivans. The news speaks to the quickening pace of Waymo's development of fully self-driving vehicles, which have been testing around the Phoenix area for more than a year.

A self-driving Waymo minivan crashed in Chandler, Arizona, this afternoon, resurrecting tough questions about the safety of autonomous technology and ripping the barely-crusted scab off the technology's reputation, which was badly wounded when an Uber self-driving car hit and killed a pedestrian in the same state just seven weeks ago. According to a police statement, a Honda sedan traveling eastbound through an intersection swerved into the Waymo Chrysler Pacifica's westbound lane to avoid hitting another car traveling north. The Honda hit the Waymo vehicle on its side, injuring the female safety driver behind the wheel of the SUV. Police say the vehicle was in autonomous mode when the incident occurred and was not traveling above the 45 mph speed limit. Waymo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The NHTSA/SAE "levels" of robocars are not just incorrect. I now believe they are contributing to an attitude towards their "level 2" autopilots that plays a small, but real role in the recent Tesla fatalities. Readers of this blog will know I have been critical of the NHTSA/SAE "levels" taxonomy for robocars since it was announced. My criticisms have ranged to simply viewing them as incorrect or misleading, and you might have enjoyed my satire of the levels which questions the wisdom of defining the robocar based on the role the human being plays in driving it. Recent events lead me to go further. I believe a case can be made that this levels are holding the industry back, and have a possible minor role in the traffic fatalities we have seen with Tesla autopilot. As such I urge the levels be renounced by NHTSA and the SAE and replaced by something better.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society. Last week, writing about Arizona's early and perhaps reckless embrace of driverless car companies, I wondered about the consequences of the awkward courtship between cities and companies who need to test their technologies in real-world environments. It seemed like the first-mover advantage was bound to accrue to the company, not the place. A fraught trial period would yield a developed, highly mobile technology that could be quickly exported to any other American city. One obvious obstacle to this hypothesis is weather.