PJ Vogt

In 2009, you could have seen Sheryl Crow there, the killers, Phish.

But the most interesting show that year was one almost nobody knew about.

In the venue parking lot, on days when there was no concert, no tour buses around to see them, the Google team would run its first test runs of their driverless cars, essentially hiding in plain sight.

A Prius driving itself around the amphitheater parking lot with an attentive safety driver sitting behind the wheel, just in case.

The team was making sure the basics functioned, that the sensors could really recognize another car, that the computer in the car was abiding by their orders.

These were the baby steps that happened in this parking lot and at an empty airplane runway that was close to their offices.

Spring 2009, the team tries actual, real road driving for the first time.

Chris Urmson takes one of the Priuses out on the Central Expressway.

Speed limit, 45 miles per hour.

There are humans driving here.

And immediately, outside the confines of the empty parking lot and empty airplane runway, here's what's clear.

They had a real problem.

The car was swerving wildly.

One more problem to fix.

Listening to this story, it's funny because I can imagine it giving me a totally different feeling than it does.

A tech company with nobody's permission was testing driverless cars on public roads in California.

I don't know why that strikes me as being about invention instead of just hubris and impunity.

Maybe it's because I know that Google would be one of the few tech companies whose driverless cars would not cause any fatal accidents in testing.

and that the team would just take more safety precautions than the other companies who'd rush in later to catch up with them once this was an arms race.

The way these cars were designed, the safety driver sat behind the steering wheel, ready to take over.