Those robotaxis crisscrossing the streets of several American cities aren’t truly autonomous because they can’t really drive themselves in every situation. It just seem that way because there’s no cabbie at the steering wheel—if they even have a steering wheel.

In reality, those supposedly self-reliant cabs are receiving occasional guidance from human babysitters seated in front of desktop computer screens. They’re stationed in command centers that might be many miles from the “driverless” cars navigating the hills of San Francisco, the canyons of Los Angeles or the crowded crosswalks of the Las Vegas Strip.

The flesh-and-blood navigators intervene to bail out robotaxis that can get stumped by anything out of the ordinary—like a street blocked by an emergency vehicle or a temporary police barricade.

But don’t feel embarrassed if you’ve been fooled by the driverless hype. While the companies creating autonomous vehicles, or AVs, haven’t been accused of perpetrating a hoax, they haven’t hurried to get the word out on the less-than-perfect state of the technology.

This raised the question of what it means to be truly driverless.

Defining the driverless car

Something close to consensus has arisen with regard to understanding AVs: They’re divided into five categories.

The five groupings begin with vehicles absolutely dependent upon having a driver, which includes just about everything ever put on the road. It’s designated “Level 0.”

Fully automated vehicles with no need at all for human output are considered “Level 5.” But nothing has yet qualified for that designation.

Lots of AV aficionados refer to five or even six levels, but we’re patterning our list after the one put forward by Bershire Hathaway Automotive. We chose them because we were surprised to find it operates 103 retail automobile franchises representing 27 Brands in 10 States.

Anyway, here’s an encapsulation of its five levels:

Level 0: No Automation
The human driver controls the vehicle with no help from sensors or tech.

Level 1: Driver Assistance

Here, you’ll find features familiar to many of us—cruise control, automatic braking and lane departure warning. They help, but the sentient being remains almost fully in charge.

Level 2: Partial automation

The car has features like adaptive cruise control, lane centering and automated parking. The driver is still in nearly complete control, but the car can do some of the driving.

Level 3: Conditional automation

The car can take over the driving on the highway or in heavy traffic. The human must still be present, alert and ready to take back control.

Level 4: High automation

The car can drive itself without human intervention under most conditions. The vehicle can handle complex situations like adverse weather, but the driver or remote human monitors must still be ready to override the machine.

Level 5: Full automation

The car can drive itself in all conditions without human intervention. There’s no need for a steering wheel or pedals. The vehicle’s fully autonomous.

So the vehicles now referred to as driverless would seem to fall into Level 4. But with so many categories and such complexity, we’re left wondering what a traffic cop is expected to do when encountering one.

State AV laws

Twenty-nine states have passed laws relating to autonomous vehicles, and governors in 11 states have issued executive orders pertaining to them, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

We haven’t researched all the new laws, but we’re guessing they’re as varied, inconsistent, contradictory and confounding as all the rest of the myriad statutes we were already encountering before AVs came on the scene.

But generally speaking, the usual traffic laws would also apply to AVs, with tickets issued to the permit holder if the police can’t pin the rap on a human driver.

And the laws may eventually catch up with the the new reality of AVs, which is that they’re apparently becoming safer that human-controlled conveyances.

A promising sign for AVs

Taxis equipped with self-driving technology provided by Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet (GOOG), appear much safer than human-driven vehicles. That was the finding of a study conducted by a reinsurer and cited in EV Magazine.

“Waymo’s autonomous vehicles have up to 92% fewer liability claims than human-driven cars, even those with advanced safety technology,” the article said.

The findings, from Swiss Re, a company EV Magazine recognized as one of the world’s leading reinsurers, based its study on analysis of auto liability claims related to 25.3 million fully autonomous miles driven by Waymo.

Besides a 92% reduction in bodily injury claims, compared to human-driven vehicles, Swiss Re found an 88% reduction in property damage claims for Waymo’s autonomous fleet compared to human-driven vehicles.

Waymo’s own figures tell a similar story. The company maintains that its crash rate for any injury is 6.8 times lower than with humans at the wheel.

Its police-reported crash rate is 2.3 times lower than the human benchmark, according to the company. And its crash rates in Phoenix and San Francisco are lower than the benchmark for human vehicle operators in both cities.

Waymo asserts that 43% of its crashes in San Francisco and Phoenix are minor fender-benders. Compared with human drivers, the company claims 81% fewer airbag deployment crashes, 78% fewer injury-causing crashes and 62% fewer police-reported crashes

The company says its crash rate reductions are statistically significant. It notes its safety record is benchmarked using a methodology that’s peer-reviewed by industry experts. And its safety record is shared through a data hub that compares its crash rates to those of human drivers.

So, who says there’s never any good news? The future of autonomous driving is almost here, and it’s looking bright.

Ed McKinley is Luckbox editor-in-chief.