Waymo takes ‘fully autonomous’ step

(USA)

One of the leading names in autonomous car tech is testing its vehicles on public roads – without a test driver – for the first time.

Waymo, an independent company which began life as the Google self-driving car project, is going to be offering a fully self-driving service for shared travel.

“In an area of the Phoenix metro region, a subset of our fleet will operate in fully autonomous mode, with Waymo as the sole driver. Over time, we’ll cover a region that’s larger than the size of Greater London, and we’ll add more vehicles as we grow,” Waymo blogged.  “Over the next few months, we’ll be inviting members of the public to take trips in our fully self-driving vehicles.”

And a new report out this week backs the early adoption of driverless cars, saying lives can be saved by using autonomous vehicles once they demonstrate ‘moderately’ superior capabilities than humans.