Waymo vehicles are now driving themselves on Pittsburgh roads, though company employees remain in the driver’s seat during testing.
Euan Guttridge, a Pittsburgh-based senior director at Waymo, confirmed Thursday the vehicles were testing fully autonomously. He said he hopes commercial service can begin “very soon.”
Guttridge made the announcement at the AI Horizons Pittsburgh Summit, a two-day event in the city’s Bakery Square complex, where Waymo also maintains its local offices.
The company, owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, already operates in over a dozen American cities, including Los Angeles, Atlanta and Nashville. The company is also testing in other nearby cities like Philadelphia, Detroit and Washington D.C.
Ethan Teicher, a Waymo spokesman, said he could not estimate when the service will be available to the general public in Pittsburgh because the firm is still waiting on state permission to remove “validation drivers” from the vehicles.
The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation did not immediately respond to inquiries about a potential timeline for permitting.
Since the company arrived in Pittsburgh last December, Guttridge said its vehicles have been mapping the region and testing software.
Jonathan Morrison, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said at the summit that the technology would help fight the “fatality crisis” on American roads and help those “left behind by the inability to drive.”
“Access to transportation is access to freedom,” Morrison said.
On its website, Waymo touts a 94% reduction in serious injury or worse crashes compared to human drivers.
But the vehicles have met pushback throughout the country, with a CNN report earlier this summer drawing attention to hundreds of incidents of the vehicles violating traffic laws and failing to grapple with scenarios “that humans instinctively handle.”
Minneapolis officials are even considering a local ordinance that would require a human monitor to remain in the vehicles.
Vandalism of the vehicles has been reported in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
In New York City, San Diego and Seattle, taxi drivers and their unions have tried to stop the arrival of driverless competitors.
Guttridge said he was unsure where the future of autonomous vehicles will lead but imagined a future with roads specially built for driverless cars separate from those occupied by human drivers.