<body><div><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=2i3klW_1FRE74Rh00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=2i3klW_1FRE74Rh00" width="400" height="225" >AUSTIN, Texas — Waymo began offering fully autonomous freeway rides in Austin, expanding its driverless service.Riders who book through the Uber app may now be routed onto freeways on select trips, the company said. Waymo said it is rolling out the feature gradually and will extend it to more riders over time."Austin riders can now experience the full breadth of what the Waymo Driver has to offer, including getting where they're going faster and more efficiently on freeways," a Waymo spokesperson said.The expansion follows months of freeway testing in Austin, including rides taken by company employees and trips supervised by Waymo specialists, the company said.Waymo already offers autonomous freeway rides in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Miami. The company said it has logged more than 1 million fully autonomous freeway miles with riders in those cities.The spokesperson said the Austin launch "reflects our methodical, safety-first approach to expanding our service." The company said the rollout follows the same process it has used in other markets under its published safety framework.Waymo has offered driverless rides in Austin through a partnership with Uber since March 2025, but until now those trips were limited to surface streets.<h2>Does Waymo's highway expansion in Austin require extra authorization?</h2>Under Texas Senate Bill 2807, commercial autonomous vehicles (AVs) must register with the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles, after which they are authorized to operate on public streets. There is no extra authorization required for freeway expansion.State Senator Paul Bettencourt serves on the Texas Senate Committee on Transportation. He said he'll let the data guide whether or not he calls for more regulation, but right now, he does not feel that the state needs to legislate additional authorization into law."I think at this point in time that they're operating within the current parameters of the law," he said. "But, however, if this is a mistake, we'll know about it quickly.”<h2>What do freeways mean for safety in autonomous vehicles?</h2>Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina Joseph F. Rice School of Law, is also an engineer by training and researches autonomous vehicles. He explained that, in some respects, freeways can make driving simpler for AVs."On at least a per-mile basis, freeways are safer than a lot of surface streets," said Walker Smith. "And so surface streets have a lot more activity, more diverse activity, speeds, a lot of diversity in road users, pedestrians, heavy vehicles and everything in between."However, he says that the higher speeds on freeways pose their own set of safety risks, including less reaction time for remote assistance within the AV software, a less accommodating environment of "weird behavior" by human drivers than on surface streets, and the risk for higher-speed, more severe collisions.Walker Smith and Sen. Bettencourt both noted that, before Waymo's trucks hit Austin highways, autonomous semi-trucks had been operating on Texas roads for over a year. However, Walker Smith said more data is needed before broad conclusions can be drawn about the safety of these AVs."The limited data that exists just simply isn't sufficient to confidently speak to safety at a statistical level," he said.Walker Smith says more data about the incidents involving AVs—crashes, malfunctions and mistakes—as well as more information about the different operating conditions of AVs logging freeway miles will be helpful in evaluating their safety in the future.Sen. Bettencourt said the Committee on Transportation continues to receive reports with updated AV data on a regular basis. In the meantime, he said riders will be the deciding factor on whether or not Waymo's highway service takes off."That's the ultimate decider here, is whether or not the public accepts it and actually will pay for a ride on it," he said. " Because if that doesn't happen, they can have all the best technology in the world and if the public doesn't want to use the service, it won't happen.”<h2>Waymo weighs in</h2>CBS Austin sent Waymo a series of questions regarding their Austin freeway rollout. A Waymo spokesperson returned the following answers:What did the testing of Waymos on freeways involve in Austin?"Freeways in Austin follow the same methodical, phased approach we've used elsewhere. We started with human specialist supervision, then moved to fully autonomous trips for local employees, before welcoming all public riders via the Uber app. We also train our system to be a defensive driver using a combination of simulation and closed-course testing."How long did Waymo test its autonomous vehicles on the freeways in Austin?"We’ve been testing fully autonomous operations on Austin freeways since February of this year, and tested with trained specialists at the wheel far before that."What were the results of this testing phase?"Our methodical approach to testing validated the Waymo Driver’s strong performance on the freeway in line with our operational performance in other cities, which allows us to confidently begin serving public riders via the Uber app now."How have Waymos performed on the freeways in other cities?"This expansion builds on the millions of fully autonomous freeway miles we've already driven with riders in Phoenix, Miami, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. The Waymo Driver has demonstrated positive results generalizing to freeways, handling the entire task of driving autonomously, including navigating on and off ramps."Does a more open, straightforward freeway change Waymo's approach versus driving on more inner-city or neighborhood streets?"There are many similarities between operating on freeways and surface streets. In many ways, freeways are like high-speed multilane roads, and both require keen awareness to safely respond to dynamic roadways. The vehicles and software are the same ones serving riders on city streets, but we've refined the vehicle's driving behavior for freeway conditions, with smoother lane changes and acceleration adjustments that account for higher speeds and rapid traffic changes. Inside the car, the display automatically zooms out at higher speeds to show riders more of what the Waymo Driver sees ahead and what it is processing."Any other comment related to safety or Austin freeway expansion?"Waymo's technology is designed to reduce leading causes of freeway collisions, like fatigued and distracted driving. The Waymo Driver sees up to three football fields away in 360 degrees with redundant sensors, and we train it to be a defensive driver through simulation and closed-course testing."</div></body>

Block Source: CBS Austin

Misinformation

Clickbait

Old or repetitive news

Explicit content

Location not relevant

AUSTIN, Texas — Waymo began offering fully autonomous freeway rides in Austin, expanding its driverless service. Riders who book through the Uber app may now be routed onto freeways on select trips, the company said. Waymo said it is rolling out the feature gradually and will extend it to more riders over time.

Waymo begins offering driverless freeway rides in Austin

NewsBreak

AUSTIN, Texas — Waymo began offering fully autonomous freeway rides in Austin, expanding its driverless service. Riders who book through the Uber app may n

Waymo begins offering driverless freeway rides in Austin

Comments / 1