Overall, riding in Uber’s self-driving car was equal parts thrilling and mundane. I was surprised by the level of skill with which the car drove itself, but also by how many times it dropped out of autonomous mode unexpectedly. (Other reporters I spoke to said that hadn’t happened to them at all.) A dinging sound would indicate when the autonomous mode suddenly disengaged. The engineers said it was impossible to say exactly why it happened without going back through the car’s data logs.
There were a few hair-raising moments, like when an oncoming tractor-trailer suddenly swerved into my lane of traffic, or when a woman in a blue-and-white striped shirt dashed out into the street in front of me. These were the kind of routine-yet-unpredictable situations drivers encounter every day, but this time it was a computer making the split-second decisions. Sometimes the car would kick out of autonomous mode, forcing me to take control; other times the car’s computer responded itself.
