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City by city, Waymo is making self-driving taxis a reality.
Across its operations in Phoenix, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, the company now delivers one hundred thousand rides every week. That’s not a lot for a taxi company—New York City taxi drivers pick up more fares in a day—but it’s an incredible achievement for autonomous driving. Almost exactly a year ago, Waymo provided just ten thousand rides per week.
Waymo’s journey has not been easy. Mobs and lunatics have attacked Waymo cars and even set them aflame, while local bureaucrats and unions see any misstep as an opportunity to rein in the company.
So far, Waymo has kept its adversaries at bay with a strategy of extreme caution. Their safety record far surpasses the average human driver and, so far, no death or serious injury has come from an accident caused by a Waymo vehicle. If anything, Waymo has been too cautious. In unfamiliar situations, Waymos are programmed to freeze and call a human remote operator for help. This protocol has caused the vehicles to occasionally block first responders trying to access crash sites. Users have also complained about the cars refusing to drive down chaotic streets or make common but illegal maneuvers—such as pulling into a bus stop—to pick up passengers more quickly.
However, Waymo’s caution turned out to be wise. After a series of accidents last year sparked major outrage, Cruise, a competing self-driving car company with a spottier safety record, was banned from San Francisco.
On one hand, it’s frustrating to see self-driving cars held to unfairly high standards. Cruise’s vehicles, despite their high-profile accidents, were still safer than human drivers and likely would have reduced total traffic deaths in San Francisco. However, the backlash also isn’t surprising. Whenever a new technology arrives, threatened special interest groups and overwrought citizens join forces and attempt to ban it. The opposition often succeeds.
Fortunately, there are signs that Waymo is winning the public relations battle. According to a recent article in The San Francisco Standard, safety-conscious parents are using Waymo to ferry their kids between home, school, and piano lessons. They prefer the driverless, remotely trackable vehicle over driving their children themselves or sending them in an Uber with a stranger. It would be hard to come up with a better testament to Waymo’s improving image.
At this point, it seems likely that Waymo will survive the initial wave of pessimism. Already in San Francisco, their robotaxis are fading into the background while improving people’s lives in innumerable and unexpected ways.
Malcolm Cochran, Digital Communications Manager
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