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U.S.|Inside a Google Street View Car: A Celebrity on Wheels
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/13/us/google-street-view-car-ride-along.html
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The online job posting was cryptic. A driver was needed, that much Joe McCallen knew. The mission? That was secret.
When he stepped inside the tricked out Honda HR-V — outfitted with a nine-foot turret on the roof, a customized screen covering the center console and a back seat filled with computers — Mr. McCallen realized he was helping Google map every corner of the world.
In his Google Street View car, Mr. McCallen has driven 100,000 miles in three years, patrolling Midwest and East Coast roads. He drives from just after sunrise to just before sunset, while cameras on the roof take photos that get spliced together into panoramic images. Because of him and countless other drivers, anyone in the world can log onto Google Maps and travel virtually along 12 million miles of roads in 110 countries. It’s the closest thing humans have to teleportation.
“I love doing it,” Mr. McCallen, 63, of Tampa Bay, said. “The places you go to, the people you see. Stuff you just can’t write.”
When he accepted a lucrative severance package from an asset management role in his 50s, he took a couple years off. Then he tried out a few other finance jobs. But he wanted to do something completely different. Driving for Google, he has stopped for moose, seen an unexpected showing of the Northern Lights in Maine and struck up deep conversations with strangers at rural diners.
