Author Malcolm Gladwell explains why he thinks driverless cars will fail in urban centers—and why he ran circles (literally) around a Waymo vehicle.

Driverless cars in an urban setting don't work because they work too well, right? So, what we went is we went to Phoenix where they had Waymo and I had my producer get in the Waymo and I ran alongside the Waymo and I would cut the Waymo off and the Waymo, of course, because it's got like 58 sensors, would stop instantly, right? And I would run circles around the Waymo and the Waymo would sit there patiently waiting for me to get out of the way. And I realized, if every car on the road is a driverless car, then there is no penalty whatsoever to pedestrians misbehaving. If you're a kid, why don't 11-year-old boys play soccer on the streets of, on 42nd Street in Manhattan? Because they're going to get hit by a car and killed. But if every car is a Waymo, you will totally, they're all going to stop and they're going to wait there for hours until you finish their game. The Waymo is, so the whole point of deterrence, the reason deterrence with human drivers work is that the driver will make a mistake and kill you inadvertently. Waymo will not make a mistake. People are always saying the problem with driverless cars is they'll make mistakes. No, no, no, no. They don't make mistakes and that's the problem.