WE CAN'T REPLACE DRIVERS FAST ENOUGH:

For the most part, Cruise and Waymo's empty cars move like diligent if nervous student drivers, never exceeding the speed limit, coming to a full stop at stop signs and hitting the brakes at the slightest hint of a problem. Often what's most alarming to people isn't how they move, but the sight of an empty car covered in cameras and sensors with a steering wheel moving on its own.

"It's just kind of uncomfortable, eerie, jarring. There's a part of our brains that thinks, this doesn't make sense," said Molly McDermott, a San Francisco public school teacher in the city's Mission District who has lived here for 15 years. "It's a level of future I'm not ready for."

Joyce McKinney lives across from a public park that doubles as an unofficial parking spot for Waymo cars. She'll see as many as three of them lined up on the side of the road, usually parallel parked. Once, one came to a stop in the middle of the road and blocked traffic for 15 minutes. Eventually, the cars spring to life and drive away.

Despite glitches, she said, she thinks they're as good as or better than local human drivers. "I feel far less menaced by the driverless cars than I do by the ones with people."

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