Waymo Launches Freeway Service In Bay Area and LA For Select Users, SFO Service Still to Come

"Waymo announced Wednesday that its cars are officially being deployed on Bay Area freeways, and while not all riders will have access to the service right away, you can theoretically now take a Waymo from downtown San Francisco to downtown San Jose. Yes, everyone, the time has come when you will begin seeing driverless cars navigating local freeways, at freeway speeds, and hopefully this experiment does not go quickly south."

""This is a significant milestone," says Mykel Kochenderfer, director of the Stanford Intelligent Systems Laboratory and co-director of the Stanford Center for AI Safety, speaking to NBC Bay Area. "We've been waiting for this moment for actually a couple of decades now." Kochenderfer suggests to NBC that this is a "make-or-break moment" for both Waymo and the autonomous vehicle industry as a whole, adding that at freeway speeds, "The consequences of error can be more significant.""

"Waymo engineers say they have been putting the robocars through various freeway tests in a closed environment, before letting them out on real freeways. As the Chronicle reports today, those tests included "simulation of dangerous scenarios like an overturned car or a lane-splitting motorcyclist." A Chronicle reporter went out for a spin in a freeway-enabled Waymo on Monday, and says that the driverless car "handled acceleration and lane changes with all the nimbleness of an experienced driver,""

Waymo has begun deploying driverless cars on Bay Area freeways, enabling trips from downtown San Francisco to downtown San Jose. The expanded service area includes stretches of highways 101 and 280 and several Peninsula cities. Engineers performed closed-environment freeway testing that simulated dangerous scenarios like overturned cars and lane-splitting motorcyclists before releasing vehicles onto real freeways. A Stanford AI expert called the expansion a significant milestone and a potential make-or-break moment because consequences of error are greater at freeway speeds. A Chronicle reporter said the Waymo handled acceleration and lane changes with the nimbleness of an experienced driver, and other motorists appeared unfazed. Initial testing included human safety drivers.

Read at sfist.com