Could Waymo's robotaxis be taught to think with the twisted and self-righteous logic of the Boston Driver?

Boston Globe

27-05-2025

Word that Waymo would be
Advertisement
The goal, of course, is to gather data. And sure, facts about roads and whatever else Waymo uses to decide if a city's a good fit might help. In other places.
Get Love Letters: The Newsletter
A weekly dispatch with all the best relationship content and commentary – plus exclusive content for fans of Love Letters, Dinner With Cupid, weddings, therapy talk, and more.
Enter Email
Sign Up
But is there a neural network deep enough to teach a robot to drive
here
? Never mind our snow, quirky street layout, and crazed delivery drivers. The bigger question is this: Can AI be taught to think with the twisted and self-righteous logic of the Boston Driver?
'Good [expletive] luck,' in the words of one Redditor.
The company's autonomous self-driving ride-hail vehicles are
Advertisement
But from my reading, even Waymo isn't sure doing business here is a good idea. Here's what a spokesperson told a Globe colleague: 'We like to have an understanding of a city before we commit,' she said.
An
understanding.
Hmmm … what would be the best way to explain to a bunch of Californians how we like to do things around here?
Let's peek into the mind of Andreas, a 25-year-old native Bostonian, Uber driver, and content creator who asked that his last name be withheld 'so my mom doesn't kill me.'
First, he defined 'Boston Driver.' 'At a four-way stop, even if he got there last, if he sees someone hesitate for even a second, he goes.'
Andreas, also an artist who goes by the name
he
breaks traffic rules but not when the 'idiots' do (i.e. other Boston Drivers).
'I assess a situation and know it's safe,' he said, providing an example: 'If I'm at a red light at 2 a.m., and no one is on the road, or in the car with me, I'm going to blow the red light.'
Although the police refuse to understand this, many Boston Drivers feel the only way to get where they're going — amid construction, double-parked delivery vehicles, and seemingly random and punitive road closures — is to improvise.
But how do you build that kind of anarchy into a system that's supposed to be based on rules and regulations, asked Galen Mook, executive director of the
To observe a Boston Driver in his natural setting, flipping off a van of toddlers, say, or merging like a battering ram, or taking a left
sans
blinker, you might assume the species has no natural enemies.
Advertisement
But that's not quite true. In 2017, Boston lowered the default speed limit for all city streets from 30 miles per hour to 25 and since 2022 has added more than 900 speed humps to neighborhood streets.
A Waymo self-driving vehicle sat curbside in 2022 at the Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix.
Matt York/Associated Press
For its part, also in the name of
But it's hard to keep a good Boston Driver down.
And aggressive students, as it turned out. 'At the beginning of the day, everyone was a stranger,' he said of his classmates. 'By lunch, it was all of us united against the teacher.'
Noonan got his license back. But while his vehicular behavior has changed, his heart hasn't. 'It's a game,' he said of driving in Boston. 'And you either win the game or you lose the game.'
As Boston Drivers face what may be an extinction-level event, a question is being raised: Who's to blame for our approach to vehicular travel? To borrow from Cassius, is the
The answer, as with all things, depends on who you ask. Here's the perspective of Dan Strollo, executive director of
Advertisement
'We believe ourselves to be very intelligent people,' he said. 'But we are near the
An associate of mine, who shall remain anonymous, sees it differently. He says drivers in New York City are actually worse; we only seem so because of our roads.
On a recent stroll in the North End, on a corner where two particularly narrow streets intersect — making a turn impossibly tight — he explained that 'merging' onto the sidewalk is simply what's done.
'You see the guy in front of you do it,' he said, 'so you just do it, too.'
Meanwhile, as bad as Boston Drivers may be, at least they're the devil we know. Will we someday look back with nostalgia at drivers who merely gave us the middle finger as they cut us off?
After all, who knows what the robots will be up to? As
Beth Teitell can be reached at