The idea of self-driving cars used to be something out of science fiction stories, whether it was KITT, a futuristic talking car from the 1980s TV series Knight Rider, or the robotic Jonny Cab taxis from the 1990 film Total Recall. Now, however, people can see cars like these driving on the streets of the DMV. The driverless taxi service Waymo has become an innovative form of transportation in many major American cities, responsible for more than 500,000 rides per week. While the majority of these rides occur in the western United States, Waymo is beginning to test its services in Baltimore and Washington, D.C. Self-driving cars like the Waymo appear to be a recent invention, but autonomous technology has a surprisingly long history in the automobile industry. Former U.S. Army engineer Francis Houdina became one of the first to create a driverless car in 1925, exhibiting what he called the “American Wonder” in New York City. Rather than being completely autonomous, though, radio controlled this car, similar to today’s remote-controlled toy cars. By the late 1960s, roboticists created the first fully autonomous vehicle, named “Shakey the Robot,” complete with internal computers, cameras, sensors and even early AI software that allowed it to navigate a route fully independently. This series of advancements continued into 1995, when, as part of the “No Hands Across America” project, two graduate students at Carnegie Mellon University successfully built a car that drove across the country almost completely on its own. In 2015, after indulging in their own self-driving car project, Google’s prototype “Firefly” made a fully independent trip through Austin, Texas. In 2016, Firefly became what is now known as Waymo. Since then, Waymo has continued testing and refining its design, launching the Early Rider Program in 2017 as its first public trial. It