I'm impressed that they're actually offering driverless rides on SF streets, but my point stands. The cars operate only on the slowest streets at the quietest hours. Any problem they encounter is handled by remote operators.
I'm not outright dismissive of self-driving cars. I truly want them to exist. I don't even own a car and dislike being behind the wheel. I just don't buy into infinite hype pushed by a revolving door of charlatans.
Also I do have a modern VR headset and celebrate the technology. But, to make a similar comparison, the metaverse "ready player one" vision is not within our lifetimes.
If you're into self driving tech, Cruise especially is regularly ridiculed for their vehicles blocking traffic. Take this latest example: https://twitter.com/as611/status/1597144790767788032
But more importantly in case you're not aware it's not true self-driving at all, they're geofenced and both Waymo as well as Cruise have been shown to have issues with even minor changes like a construction site. The tech isn't there, we don't really have full self-driving and if we actually put a million "self-driving" cars on the road as the above user suggested, it would be utter mayhem with current tech. If this will change in the future is to be seen and from what I've observed progress has already slowed as per ninety–ninety rule. It's easy to have some autonomy functions. It's hard to have millions of fully automated cars. So far, we're nowhere near it.