Waymo was cleared by California regulators to expand its embattled self-driving car service into Los Angeles and San Mateo counties — despite pushback from local officials who have cited safety concerns following the robotaxi’s rocky test period.
The robotaxi startup — owned by Google-parent Alphabet — got the green light from the California Public Utilities Commission to expand its services, though the government agency didn’t say when Waymo could begin operating in America’s second-largest city, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Local leaders have expressed safety concerns after the robotaxi’s rocky test run in Los Angeles, when it failed to stop at the direction of a traffic officer.
LA County Supervisor Janice Hahn called the CPUC’s approval “a dangerous decision,” per the LA Times.
“These robotaxis are far too untested and Angelenos shouldn’t be Big Tech’s guinea pigs. Decisions like this one should be informed by cities, not made over city objections,” Hahn added in a statement to the outlet.
The worries about autonomous vehicles have been compounding in recent months, as seemingly all companies behind self-driving cars has faced safety issues — including Tesla, which recalled virtually every vehicle late last year over regulators’ concerns that its “Autopilot” system is unsafe.
General Motors’ Cruise, meanwhile, is under multiple federal probes after one of its robotaxis dragged a pedestrian who had been struck by another car.
A spokesperson for Waymo told The Post that the company is “grateful to the CPUC for this vote of confidence in our operations, which paves the way for the deployment of our commercial Waymo One service in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Peninsula.”
The company rep also assured that Waymo will “take a careful and incremental approach to expansion by continuing to work closely with city officials, local communities and our partners to ensure we’re offering a service that’s safe, accessible and valuable to our riders.”
Representatives for the CPUC did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
As part of its testing process in Los Angeles — which has been going on for the past year — Waymo marketed the service and taxied public passengers around the city in its fully autonomous white Jaguars during an invitation-only period.
Waymo’s approval in Los Angeles and San Mateo counties gives it access to more than 4,500 square miles — substantially more than in the other two cities it operates in, San Francisco and Phoenix, which span 47 square miles and 517 square miles, respectively.
Peter Finn — president of the Teamsters Joint Council 7, a union that represents freight and delivery truck drivers — noted to the LA Times that Waymo was issued a recall as recently as a month ago after two of its vehicles struck the same pickup truck just minutes apart.
“The fact that this permit is being granted following such a fiasco raises a lot of questions about the due diligence conducted during this process and how forthcoming Waymo is with both regulators and the general public,” Finn told the LA Times.
The company’s self-driving taxis have been operating in Phoenix since 2018, when it got the approval of Arizona authorities to operate as a Transportation Network Company, or TNC.
Having a TNC license allows Waymo — previously known as the Google Self-Driving Car Project — to start operating as a business, similar to Uber and Lyft, which have also been granted TNC status.
A spokesman for Arizona’s Department of Transportation told The Post at the time that a TNC license does not differentiate between human-driven vehicles and autonomous vehicles.
Waymo has been in San Francisco since 2021. Last year, safety concerns surrounding the self-driving cars heightened where an online DMV report said a Waymo car “was engaged in autonomous mode” during a deadly accident involving a small dog “which did not survive.”
“A test driver was present” in the driver’s seat, but the vehicle’s automatic driving system (ADS) was in control, per the May 2023 report.
Officials in South San Francisco, San Mateo and Los Angeles counties, as well as multiple transportation agencies, have sent letters of opposition to the CPUC, the LA Times reported.
The LA Department of Transportation also argued that there needs to be more regulations around automated vehicles before they’re deployed, as well as standardization of disengagement protocols.
“Any expansion by Waymo will set a precedent for these companies and those looking to enter the marketplace to deploy without any rules or safeguards in place that were promulgated without meaningful coordination with local jurisdictions,” the DOT’s letter said, per the LA Times.
However, as it stands, local jurisdictions have no say in the commercial deployment of autonomous vehicles.
