{"id":180675,"date":"2024-01-17T12:25:43","date_gmt":"2024-01-17T18:25:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/01\/waymos-driverless-cars-are-hitting-the-highway-sans-safety-drivers-in-arizona"},"modified":"2024-01-17T12:25:43","modified_gmt":"2024-01-17T18:25:43","slug":"waymos-driverless-cars-are-hitting-the-highway-sans-safety-drivers-in-arizona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/01\/waymos-driverless-cars-are-hitting-the-highway-sans-safety-drivers-in-arizona","title":{"rendered":"Waymo\u2019s Driverless Cars Are Hitting the Highway Sans Safety Drivers in Arizona"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/tgX7yzyfQ6E?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>To back up the decision, Waymo pointed to its safety record and <a href=\"https:\/\/singularityhub.com\/2021\/06\/11\/waymo-self-driving-trucks-will-soon-start-moving-freight-across-texas\/\">history building and operating self-driving trucks<\/a> on highways. (The company shuttered its self-driving truck project last year to focus on taxis.) Including highways should also decrease route times for riders\u2014especially from the airport\u2014with some rides taking half the time.<\/p>\n<p>Although highways are simpler to navigate than city streets\u2014where cars contend with twists, turns, signs, stoplights, pedestrians, and pets\u2014the stakes are higher. A crash at 10 or 20 miles per hour is less likely to cause major injury than one at highway speeds. And while it\u2019s relatively straightforward (if less than ideal) for a malfunctioning robotaxi to stop or pull to the side of the road and await human help in the city, such tactics won\u2019t do on the highway, where it\u2019s dangerous for cars to suddenly slow or stop.<\/p>\n<p>But learning to drive on the highway will be a necessary step if robotaxis are to become an appealing, widely used product. After years of testing, the question of whether companies can build a sustainable business out of all that investment is increasingly pressing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To back up the decision, Waymo pointed to its safety record and history building and operating self-driving trucks on highways. (The company shuttered its self-driving truck project last year to focus on taxis.) Including highways should also decrease route times for riders\u2014especially from the airport\u2014with some rides taking half the time. Although highways are simpler [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,6,17,1491],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-180675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-robotics-ai","category-sustainability","category-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180675\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}