【Watch 365 Days Online】

It appears that Waymo's "fully self-driving" taxi service was a bit too aggressive with its 2018 launch date.

A report from The Watch 365 Days OnlineInformation Tuesday paints a bleak picture out of Phoenix, Arizona, where Waymo seems to be experiencing glitches with its autonomous vehicles.

Merging into highway traffic, navigating around groups of people, turning left -- these are just a few of the hurdles facing Waymo's fleet of Chrysler Pacifica minivans that the company is hoping to turn into a fully autonomous taxi service.

The minivans often drive in the center of wide roads and stop for a full three seconds at stop signs, habits that aren't popular among some local residents. At least a dozen people told The Information, "I hate them."

A Waymo spokesperson said in an email statement, "Waymo was founded on a mission to make our roads safer, and that's why we built a cautious and defensive driver. The way to responsibly deploy our fully driverless technology is to robustly test and validate in a geo-fenced territory that grows over time. Anything less than that undermines safety and the promise of this technology."

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Although Waymo claims that its fleet has self-driven more than 8 million miles, people familiar with the Waymo testing program say that the minivans still rely on remote operators to step in and help the cars in tough situations.

Waymo admits its still mixing in driverless and test-driven vehicles as it builds out its taxi program, but this is in contrast with recent messaging from Waymo and other outlets about a truly driverless experience. Ellice Perez, Waymo's head of operations, posted a brief, behind-the-scenes glance of Waymo's process on Medium showing a factory "buzzing with teams," and Bloomberg took a ride with a teenager who commutes to school in a driverless Waymo van.

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In an exclusive report about Waymo's plans, The Verge reported that a "chaperone" would be in vans on initial self-driven runs.

These problems are what's kept other startups and self-driving programs from pushing such ambitious launch dates. GM's Cruise project is set for 2019, and Ford's is way out in 2021.

AV software Vayavision CEO Ronny Cohen emailed some thoughts on the driverless decision processes that appear to be tripping up Waymo. He emphasized that vehicle's ability make a decision to make an unprotected left-hand turn or merge into traffic is based on perceiving road conditions to accurately predict other vehicle behavior.

"Accurate perception leads to more precise monitoring of a car, cyclist, or human’s orientation, and allows the car to see individual objects, rather than one whole mass. With improved perception, cars can tell what is what, who is moving where, at what speed, and more. This is a classic example of how better perception will lead to better prediction and assist self-driving cars with high-speed merging and group interactions," Cohen wrote.

What some might see as flaws with the Waymo vans Waymo considers safety precautions and part of developing safer cars.

For full autonomy, known as Level 5, researchers and experts, including Waymo's CEO, expect that it will take tech and car firms more time to test and improve their self-driving technology. That's why companies such as Tesla have focused on more semi-autonomous features -- Level 2 self-driving skills are more attainable with a human ready to take over.

Within the next step of autonomy -- Level 3 -- there's this murky question of whether a human driver needs to pay attention or not. That's why "Waymo wants to bypass Level 3," Cody Fleming, an engineering professor at the University of Virginia, told me earlier this year.

Waymo for now is focused on Level 4 autonomy, which tests and drives the vehicles in a location-specific area in certain conditions, like the suburban, dry, warm roads in Arizona. But if Waymo's vans still can't merge into traffic there, it might be too soon to let go of its human drivers.

UPDATE: Aug. 29, 2018, 11:20 a.m. PDT This story has been updated with a statement from Waymo and other additional information about their self-driving program.

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Topics Self-Driving Cars