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Waymo will launch its driverless taxi service in Los Angeles tomorrow after a series of accidents.
Angelenos will be able to sign up for Waymo’s waitlist to be the first to ride in fully autonomous vehicles after years of testing.
This initial launch will be free for a select number of Los Angeles residents and will transition to a paid service in the coming weeks, but Waymo did not specify when paid rides will officially begin.
The company offers rides in a 63-square-mile area from Santa Monica to downtown Los Angeles and plans to increase its radius over time.
Waymo will roll out its driverless taxi service in Los Angeles starting tomorrow
There are currently more than 50,000 Angelenos on Waymo’s waiting list, and the company said it will gradually add those residents before permanently welcoming all riders.
“Autonomous driving, once an unimaginable future, is now a real way to get around for tens of thousands of people every week,” said Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana.
“After achieving key milestones in each city, we are very excited to bring the safety, convenience and pleasure of our Waymo One service to more people in Los Angeles and Austin this year.”
Waymo invited Los Angeles residents to experience fully autonomous rides in October of last year and said that since then, locals have taken more than 15,000 rides in the past five months in Santa Monica, Century City, West Hollywood, Mid City, Korea Town and Downtown Los Angeles.
Although Waymo is rolling out its taxi service in Los Angeles, it is still conducting fully autonomous testing in Austin, Texas.
Testing is only open to Waymo employees and covers 43 square miles of Austin, including downtown, Barton Hills, Riverside, East Austin, Hyde Park and others.
The company said it hopes to open its Waymo One option to public riders later this year and said its autonomous vehicles “have traveled more than 10 million miles without a human driver behind the wheel.”
He added that there is “an unprecedented set of data on the safe driving experience that has helped generalize Waymo Driver’s capabilities to Los Angeles and Austin.”
However, Waymo’s announcement comes after a recent series of accidents that forced the company to scale back its rollout.
In December, two of the driverless vehicles also crashed into the same truck in Arizona after misjudging the vehicle’s location.
The collision caused Waymo to issue several recalls and updates to its software two months later.
“This voluntary recall reflects how seriously we take our responsibility to safely deploy our technology and communicate transparently with the public,” Waymo said at the time.
“There are hundreds of recall reports submitted annually to NHTSA and we respect the importance of this highway safety framework and our relevant legal obligations.”
Then in February, a vehicle collided with a cyclist in San Francisco after he turned left behind a large truck crossing the intersection.
The company said the truck had hidden the person from view and claimed the Waymo vehicle braked sharply but was unable to avoid colliding with the cyclist.
Other collisions included an incident in June last year when a Waymo vehicle struck and killed a dog in San Francisco and just a month later, a vehicle caused a three-car crash in Tempe, Arizona, after braking to avoid a fallen branch. .