Waymo, the autonomous vehicle company backed by Google, announced a significant milestone this week: its robotaxis are now permitted to navigate freeways in select US cities. This expansion marks a major step toward wider adoption of self-driving technology and aims to significantly enhance the convenience of Waymo’s ride-hailing service.
Initially, freeway access will be rolled out in three major metropolitan areas: the San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix, and Los Angeles. The company anticipates gradual availability for an increasing number of riders within these cities before eventually extending the service to Austin and Atlanta.
This expansion builds on Waymo’s earlier testing of freeway driving in Phoenix earlier this year, conducted with human supervision. Dmitri Dolgov, Waymo’s co-CEO, emphasized the complexity of mastering autonomous freeway navigation. “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,” he explained in an interview with NBC News.
Waymo asserts its self-driving system is demonstrably safer than human drivers based on its own data. The company claims a significantly lower number of accidents resulting in injuries to pedestrians, cyclists, or motorcyclists compared to human-operated vehicles. However, this claim has been subject to scrutiny and investigation.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recently launched an investigation into a Waymo incident where a vehicle reportedly bypassed a fully stopped school bus. This follows another NHTSA probe opened in May 2024, examining 22 separate incidents involving Waymo vehicles colliding with objects like gates, chains, and parked cars. These collisions also allegedly involved the vehicles disregarding traffic safety controls.
Adding to the complexity, Waymo voluntarily recalled its entire fleet of 1,212 self-driving taxis in November 2024. The recall addressed a software vulnerability identified as significantly increasing the risk of collisions with stationary objects. A subsequent software update aimed to mitigate this issue.
Despite these challenges and investigations, Waymo continues its rapid expansion, adding London, Dallas, and Nashville to its list of planned service locations for 2026. This aggressive growth strategy demonstrates the company’s unwavering confidence in the future of autonomous driving technology despite ongoing concerns about safety and regulation.
The increasing prevalence of self-driving cars on freeways raises important questions about the future of transportation infrastructure, traffic management, and public perception of safety in an increasingly automated world.
