If you’re driving on the freeway around Phoenix anytime soon, keep your eyes peeled for a car driving itself. Waymo will start testing its autonomous vehicles on Arizona highways this month, the company announced Monday. The driverless robotaxi service, from the same parent company as Google, is branching out from local routes and will start traveling at much higher speeds, breaking new ground for self-driving cars.
Waymo conducted its first driverless ride in 2015 when a blind man in Austin Texas rode in the back seat of one of the company’s autonomous vehicles, with no human up front. That ride went well, and roughly nine years later, Waymo is now the first autonomous ride-hailing service with Waymo One. It began offering driverless rides around metropolitan Phoenix via the Uber app in October.
The company says it has been testing its vehicles on Phoenix highways with a passenger behind the wheel, but not driving, for years. This month, it will remove that human altogether, as its driverless vehicles will begin navigating the high speed routes on its own.
The expansion onto highways comes at a time when autonomous vehicles are facing increased scrutiny. Cruise, a competitor to Waymo, recently pulled its robotaxis after one of its vehicles dragged a woman 20 feet in San Francisco. Kyle Vogt, the CEO and co-founder of the GM-backed company, promptly resigned a month later.
Waymo seems to have the best autonomous technology of the bunch, but it has problems too. Wired reported an instance of a Waymo vehicle stopping in the middle of a San Francisco road, blocking a bus from passing. “This one not smart yet. Not smart. Not good,” said the bus driver. In another instance, a Waymo vehicle made a left turn in front of a moving bus.
In California, it turns out that these self-driving cars actually can’t get traffic tickets like humans do. Arizona has much better, more thorough laws around autonomous vehicles, and it seems Waymo will be responsible for any traffic violations that its vehicles get into, according to HB 2831.
Soon, you’ll be able to catch a ride on the highway driven by a robot. To start, the company says, “Waymo employees will have the opportunity to hail rider-only trips on freeways across Phoenix,” followed by Waymo One riders later on. Waymo says the expansion will one day allow robotaxis to quickly take passengers to Phoenix’s main airport, Sky Harbor, hopefully without startling too many humans who are still driving cars around them.