Are Human Drivers Finally Obsolete?

How a secret project at Google led to driverless cars on American roads.

Freakonomics Radio shares a story from our friends at Search Engine. (Part one of a two-part series (freakonomics.com/is-this-the-end-of-driving).)

• SOURCES:

• Alex Davies (alexdavieswriting.com), author of Driven: The Race To Create the Autonomous Car.

• Chris Urmson (ir.aurora.tech/company-information/leadership-…), co-founder and C.E.O. of Aurora.

• Don Burnette (investors.kodiak.ai/corporate-governance/manag…), founder and C.E.O. of Kodiak AI.

• PJ Vogt (searchengine.show), reporter, writer, and host of the Search Engine podcast.

• Sebastian Thrun (robots.stanford.edu), roboticist, C.E.O. of Sage AI Labs, adjunct faculty at Stanford University.

• Timothy B. Lee (understandingai.org/about), author of Understanding AI newsletter.

• RESOURCES:

• "Very few of Waymo’s most serious crashes were Waymo’s fault (understandingai.org/p/very-few-of-waymos-most-…)," by Kai Williams (Understand AI, 2025).

• Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car (amzn.to/4bsso7B), by Alex Davies (2021).

• "An Oral History of the Darpa Grand Challenge, the Grueling Robot Race That Launched the Self-Driving Car (wired.com/story/darpa-grand-challenge-2004-ora…)," by Alex Davies (WIRED, 2017).

• Understanding AI (understandingai.org), newsletter on Substack.

• Waymo Safety Dashboard (waymo.com/safety/impact).

• EXTRAS:

• "The Fascinatingly Mundane Secrets of the World’s Most Exclusive Nightclub (freakonomics.com/podcast/the-fascinatingly-mun…)," by Freakonomics Radio (2024).

• Search Engine (searchengine.show), podcast by PJ Vogt.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.