California drivers, do not be alarmed: If you soon see a bunch of cars on your roads without anyone behind the wheel, it’s just Waymo testing out the future of transportation in your fair cities.
That’s because the Alphabet-owned company (and former unit of Google) announced that it’s become the first company to gain approval from the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) for a permit to test driverless vehicles on public roads. Waymo said in a blog post that it will begin testing the cars near its Silicon Valley home base, including parts of Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, and Palo Alto, before expanding to other parts of California – which will require it to submit an additional permit request to the DMV.
Waymo explained its testing process:
Waymo’s permit includes day and night testing on city streets, rural roads and highways with posted speed limits of up to 65 miles per hour. Our vehicles can safely handle fog and light rain, and testing in those conditions is included in our permit. We will gradually begin driverless testing on city streets in a limited territory and, over time, expand the area that we drive in as we gain confidence and experience to expand.
If a Waymo vehicle comes across a situation it doesn’t understand, it does what any good driver would do: comes to a safe stop until it does understand how to proceed. For our cars, that means following well-established protocols, which include contacting Waymo fleet and rider support for help in resolving the issue.
The testing will at first be handled by members of the Waymo team, but the company will then give the public opportunities to test the technology as well. Waymo first began working on self-driving technology in 2009 when it was still a unit of Google and has previously tested the vehicles in Arizona.
Photo: Waymo