SAN FRANCISCO: This massive expansion comes amid worries about the impact more driverless cars will have on city streets. On Friday, California regulators granted Alphabet’s self-driving car division Waymo permission to expand its robotaxi service to include highways in several Bay Area cities and large swaths of Los Angeles.
The California Public Utilities Commission’s (CPUC) ruling permits the business to use its robotaxis at up to 65 mph on both local and freeways. However, a Waymo representative, Julia Ilina, stated in a statement that the business has “no immediate plans” to extend its robotaxi service to highways and instead intends to take a “careful and incremental approach to expansion.”
Even so, the decision represents a significant growth for the business, which has been providing its round-the-clock robotaxi service in Phoenix and San Francisco for several months. In California, the firm uses a safety driver to test its vehicles on freeways; however, Ilina stated that in Phoenix, the tests do not involve a human driver on the highways. At the moment, the company doesn’t transport passengers across highways.
The decision on Friday came after strong opposition from local authorities, especially in the counties of San Mateo and Los Angeles, who attempted to stop the expansion on the grounds that they ought to have more control over whether and how the technology is used on their streets. Lettering the state commission in November, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass expressed her concern about the “adverse impacts” of the expansion.
“The risk is exponentially greater in a city that spans 500 square miles, has a population of approximately 4 million, and contains 7,500 miles of roadways,” the author stated.
However, the state’s technology regulator, the CPUC, stated in its ruling that Waymo had “complied with the requirements” and is free to grow right away. A number of California organizations, such as the California Chamber of Commerce and the California Bicycle Coalition, supported Waymo in spite of the resistance.
The coalition said in a statement that it “sees autonomous driving technology as an opportunity to improve roadways across California and nationwide.” “Waymo’s technology has the potential to improve road safety by eliminating human error and adhering to traffic laws, like speed limits, which many human drivers neglect to do.”
In California, however, where multiple accidents last month fueled public authorities’ safety fears about the vehicles coming to their communities, the controversy around autonomous cars is probably not going to end anytime soon. For instance, in February, a Waymo car crashed into a closing gate as it was leaving the University of Southern California campus over a few days, and the following day, a car and a bike collided in San Francisco.
Days later, the business declared that its software would be voluntarily recalled due to an incident involving a pickup truck in Phoenix.
Major injuries did not arise from any of the occurrences.
The business is “appreciative to the CPUC for this vote of confidence in our operations,” according to Ilina.
“We are immensely appreciative of the users and community partners who have helped us with our service up to this point, which has included over 15,000 rides in Los Angeles, and we’re excited to expand the reach of fully autonomous ride-hailing,” the spokesperson stated.