Waymo has been promising to start a commercial driverless ride-hailing service in the Phoenix area by the end of this year. With only a few weeks left in the year, the company announced that, starting yesterday, it will provide rides for hire over a 100-square-mile area that includes Chandler, Gilbert, Mesa, and Tempe, Arizona. The service will work like Uber or Lyft: potential users will launch an app on their smart phones, enquire about the cost of going to a particular destination, and then choose whether to hire the car.
Yet there are a couple of important caveats. First, Waymo will have a test driver behind the wheel ready to take over in case of an emergency. Second, only people who are pre-screened by Waymo will be eligible to hire a car for the service.
Since April, Waymo has been testing the service with more than 400 “early riders” in the area using it on a non-fee basis. Some of these trips were taken without a test driver behind the wheel, but many if not most had such a driver. All of the early riders will be eligible to use the ride-hailing service, and the company says it will add several hundred more. The pre-approval process is supposedly necessary so the company doesn’t get overwhelmed with demand.
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Early reports indicate Waymo’s ride-hailing prices will be about the same as Uber or Lyft, showing that driverless cars won’t save money if they are not truly driverless. Given those prices, the company isn’t likely to be overwhelmed with demand.
One of Waymo’s vehicles was involved in a crash in October that the company blamed on the human test driver. Apparently, a car in another lane changed lanes into the Waymo car’s lane, so the human driver took over to change lanes and avoid a crash. But the human driver failed to notice there was a motorcycle in the other lane that collided with the Waymo vehicle. Without the human to take over, the car (which probably detected the motorcycle) might have taken the hit from the other car, which would have been the other car’s fault.
In any case, it is disappointing that Waymo is uncertain enough about its driverless programming that it still putting test drivers behind the wheel. While Waymo calls this an historic event, real history will be made only when there are no test drivers, the service is open to anyone who has a smart phone, and prices are significantly lower than human-driven ride-hailing services.
While Waymo calls this an historic event, real history will be made only when…the service is open to anyone who has a smart phone…
I wonder if that’s true. In the case of ride sharing it almost certainly won’t be. Ride share companies will have some sort of responsibility to vet riders. Ride share companies will be liable in civil cases involving riders assaulting fellow riders in the car. I don’t see any way around that. It’s not as if Waymo is a government agency that has immunity from those sorts of civil lawsuits.
But what about non-shared rides? Does Waymo have any ability to discriminate? What if the ride involves robbing a bank? Kidnapping someone? Can Waymo reject rides for convicted, released bank robbers or kidnappers? This will be interesting.
One of the rumors is that Waymo cars are still so bad at left turns that their human drivers almost always make them for the car. I wouldn’t take Waymo at their word that the cars would’ve avoided the accident.