Toronto residents might start spotting Waymo robotaxis on the road, but with humans behind the wheel until at least 2028.
The news: Waymo, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company, announced on Friday that it’s bringing its autonomous ride-hailing services to Toronto through a provincial pilot program. Human drivers will be behind the wheel for the deployment’s initial phase, Waymo said, and it aims to serve riders autonomously in 2028.
To help manage its fleet of robotaxis, Waymo is partnering with Toronto-based Element Fleet Management. The companies said they will invest in “hundreds of roles” related to vehicle maintenance, validation driving, and customer service.
From the source: “We are taking a rigorous, phased, safety-first approach, starting with high-definition mapping of local street networks and testing with trained autonomous specialists behind the wheel,” Waymo’s press release reads. The release says the validation period will help Waymo’s autonomous driving technology adapt to Toronto’s “distinct driving conditions.”
The context: First commercially deployed in Phoenix, Ariz., in 2018, Waymo now has ride-hailing services in 15 US cities and is testing in several more. The Toronto pilot program represents its first official foray into Canada, and may have been in the works for a while. Last December, the Toronto Star reported that Waymo was lobbying the Toronto city hall about bylaws and regulations related to autonomous driving.
According to Waymo safety performance reports, the Waymo Driver autonomous system has been involved in 95 percent fewer “serious injury or worse” crashes than human drivers and has better collision avoidance. However, the company’s deployment in other cities has sometimes yielded glitches, including the recalls of thousands of vehicles after Waymos mistakenly drove into construction zones.
Final thought: The reaction to Waymo’s Toronto entry among Canada’s tech-associated groups has been largely positive. The Toronto chapter of Build Canada welcomed the move (after having published a policy memo advocating for Toronto to be an early adopter of self-driving tech), and the tech industry policy group Chamber of Progress pointed to the potential economic and job benefits self-driving technology could bring.
But not everyone in Toronto is pleased with the development. Technologists for Democracy, a grassroots group of tech workers and advocates, created an open letter in the spring outlining concerns about data sovereignty and privacy, labour disruptions, and increased road congestion from Waymo’s deployment. Today, the group urged government officials to pause Waymo’s rollout and consult with residents.
Feature image courtesy Unsplash. Photo by Anil Baki Durmus.