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—especially from the airport—with some rides taking half the time.
Although highways are simpler to navigate than city streets—where cars contend with twists, turns, signs, stoplights, pedestrians, and pets—the 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’s 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’t do on the highway, where it’s dangerous for cars to suddenly slow or stop.
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.
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