Self-driving vehicles are making advancements very quickly. In some cities, they can be found on the streets for testing and even in use as public taxis.

While there is little doubt that self-driving cars are going to be commonplace in the future, they still have a long way to go before they can be 100% unmanned without any problems.

Waymo is a company owned by Google that operates self-driving taxis. For the most part, they do a good job and people seem to love the novelty of being able to sit in the back of a taxi with no driver, and get where they are going.

When something does go wrong, however, it can be pretty scary. One thing that people are finding that the Waymo taxis don’t do quite well enough is follow the hand signals of police, construction workers, and others.

The taxi seems to be able to see the person in the road, but doesn’t always get things right in terms of following their demands. One video (see below) shows the car stopped and trying to turn left while a police officer is directing traffic. The officer is allowing cross traffic to go at the moment, but the Waymo taxi just inches its way up and then decides to turn even though the officer did not say it was their turn.

While undoubtedly scary (and maybe would have earned the robotaxi a ticket), the car did complete the turn safely.

There are plenty of other videos out there that show Waymo and other self-driving cars following the hand signals of police officers flawlessly, so it does seem to be getting better.

The question is, how soon will companies like Waymo, Tesla, and others be able to perfect the self-driving to the point where it is always an improvement over human drivers? This will likely happen sooner than most people expect.

I would love a self-driving car.