Waymo to start taking freeway rides in select cities
Waymo says its autonomous vehicles are ready to drive its taxi service customers on the freeway.
The Google-backed autonomous vehicle company made the announcement Wednesday. Freeway service will debut first in the San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix, and Los Angeles.
Waymo previously began testing freeway driving under human supervision in Phoenix in early 2024.
"This has been a long time in the making,” said Waymo co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov, according to NBC News. "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."
The company said in its announcement of freeway access that it would be available to a "growing number" of riders in the initial cities. Service will also eventually expand to other locations including Austin and Atlanta.
Waymo says its robotaxis are safer than human drivers, according to the company's data. The company claims its cars had far fewer crashes that led to pedestrian, cyclist, and motorcyclist injuries, compared to human drivers.
Waymo has also been the subject of federal safety investigations. The National Highway Traffic Safety administration recently announced that it's reviewing an incident involving a Waymo that passed a fully stopped school bus.
"Safety is our top priority, as we provide hundreds of thousands of fully autonomous paid trips every week in some of the most challenging driving environments in the U.S.," a Waymo spokesperson told Mashable. The spokesperson said that Waymo will continue to work with NHTSA.
In May 2024, NHTSA opened an investigation into Waymo for 22 reported incidents in which its autonomous vehicles collided with objects like gates, chains, and parked vehicles. The cars also appeared to disobey traffic safety control devices.
In November 2024, Waymo voluntarily recalled 1,212 of its self-driving taxis. The recalled cars, which comprised the entirety of the company's fleet at the time, received a software update in November designed to significantly decrease the likelihood that Waymos would collide with stationary objects.
Waymo's reach has grown rapidly in recent months, adding London, Dallas, and Nashville to the list of cities it plans to serve in 2026.
Topics Self-Driving Cars Social Good
Rebecca Ruiz is a Senior Reporter at Mashable. She frequently covers mental health, digital culture, and technology. Her areas of expertise include suicide prevention, screen use and mental health, parenting, youth well-being, and meditation and mindfulness. Rebecca's experience prior to Mashable includes working as a staff writer, reporter, and editor at NBC News Digital and as a staff writer at Forbes. Rebecca has a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and a masters degree from U.C. Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.
