LOS ANGELES – The driverless ride-hailing company Waymo began offering rides on freeways in the Los Angeles area, as well as in the Bay Area and Phoenix.
Introducing rides on freeways “is built on real-world performance and millions of miles logged on freeways, skillfully handling highway dynamics with our employees and guests in Phoenix, San Francisco and Los Angeles,” according to Waymo.
“This experience, reinforced by comprehensive testing as well as extensive operational preparation, supports the delivery of a safe and reliable service. We’ve also closely collaborated with safety officials, to seamlessly support this new phase of service.”
Waymo’s robo-taxi service has been operating on Los Angeles-area streets for about a year. Wednesday marked the first day the service has moved onto area freeways, following extensive testing.
“Freeway driving is one of those things that’s very easy to learn but very hard to master when we’re talking about full autonomy without a human driver as a backup, and at scale. So, it took time to do it properly,” Waymo co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov told reporters in a briefing discussing the expansion.
