On 1 September Waymo began carrying its first public riders in three more US cities, bringing the number of cities with fully autonomous rides to 14. According to the company, tens of thousands have signed up in each. Access opens gradually, not all at once.
- Denver, San Diego and Tampa: first public riders, no driver.
- Waymo cites its own data showing 94 per cent fewer crashes with serious or worse injuries compared with human drivers.
- The three cities get the newest vehicle platform and the next-generation driver.
The president of the San Diego chapter of the National Federation of the Blind says that with ordinary ride-hailing she never knows whether the driver will turn away her guide dog. In a car with no driver, that question disappears.
The quote is from Waymo's announcement and it is hand-picked, of course. But it says more than any table: the machine has no opinion about the dog.
The 94 is theirs and calculated by them. I write it as it is: a company claim. It becomes a fact when someone independent gets the data and reaches the same result.
Fourteen cities for one company is no longer an experiment. It is a network growing city by city, and each new city starts with a queue of people who signed up in advance.