The driverless vehicles still can't take L.A.'s notorious highways.
Waymo, the robotaxi service owned by Alphabet, has dropped its waitlist of roughly 300,000 people and will now be open to anyone with a smartphone in Los Angeles, according to an announcement on the company’s website Tuesday. People in L.A. looking for a driverless taxi can download the Waymo One app starting today, and it’s just the latest sign that the sometimes controversial robotaxis are on a path to become more normalized on American streets.
Waymo already has a presence in San Francisco and Phoenix, with publicly available rides in Austin and Atlanta reportedly coming soon.Part of Waymo’s marketing pitch is providing a sense of safety and peace of mind to passengers who may not want to encounter a human driver. The company’s press release includes a testimonial from Tisha Janigan, founder of She is Hope, a nonprofit centered on helping single mothers.
But the company, like all robotaxi operators around the country, has been the subject of controversy, including a collision with a cyclist. Robotaxi enthusiasts argue that driverless cars are actually safer, and while that may be true in some respects, the subject of liability when something goes wrong has always been a tricky one.
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