Waymo cars are an exceptional alternative to taking an Uber or Lyft for commuting around your area.
As a company that prioritizes safety in their vehicles, Waymo does a superb job when it comes to providing a safe and effortless ride for their customers.
Waymo cars are designed to ensure that the passengers have a comfortable and stress-free ride without the awkward conversations that come with an Uber or Lyft.
Waymo is comparatively much safer than human drivers, according to a study done in December of 2023 when they reached a milestone of 7 million miles driven.
Waymo’s Team said on their website, “This means that over the 7.1 million miles Waymo drove, there were an estimated 17 fewer injuries and 20 fewer police-reported crashes compared to if human drivers, with the benchmark crash rate, would have driven the same distance in the areas we operate.”
Waymo not only has safe and secure cars but also has new and advanced technology that allows these driverless cars to navigate around busy streets.
Andrew Chatham, Senior Director of Commercialization, Scale, and Infrastructure at Waymo, explained the technology used in their cars, “So we use a variety of sensors on the car. There’s cameras, there’s radars and lidar — which is a laser range finding system. We take all that information, we look 360 degrees around us, multiple times a second, and we drive.”
Even with this state of the art technology, many people are skeptical about the driving abilities of these cars and how they handle pedestrians, intersections and windy roads.
Reporters Makenna Sievertson and Kevin TIdmarsh for the LAist busted some of these myths when taking a roundtrip in downtown L.A.. Sievertson and Tidmarsh also had their doubts about the self-driving car, but it did outperform their expectations.
Tidmarsh said, “There were a couple points that were a little bit hairy … but there were lots of parts of the experience that definitely did make me feel comfortable.”
As of now Waymo is still not 100% trusted among citizens, but their goal is to become the world’s most trusted driver.
On the contrary, some people are not convinced that Waymo cars are safe and reliable drivers. They don’t trust the technology used in the new self-driving cars and believe that they are more susceptible to crashes.
For example, Los Angeles City Councilman Hugo Soto-Martinez expressed his dislike of driverless cars when he said to ABC News, “We’ve heard of these cars shutting down when they lose cell service, traffic being backed up, they don’t know how to maneuver through more, you know, winding roads.”
But I say as technology is becoming more focused on in today’s world the Waymo cars will be able to make major improvements and fix any major problems in their futuristic cars.
Also as AI and technology are being improved upon week in and week out, the Waymo cars will receive considerable new features and characteristics that can make the cars seem more reliable.
Chatham is adamant that Waymo cars are street ready and that they have a trusted design that ensures safety in their vehicles.
Catham said in an interview with ABC News, “It’s very clear that it is ready for the streets — we’ve seen from statistics that it is safer than human drivers, so if you’re comfortable with those, you should be pretty comfortable with Waymo, even more comfortable.”
Furthermore, the people who are skeptical about Waymo also have friends or co-workers that drive just as recklessly and probably even worse than most Waymo cars ever will.
People are quick to point and judge the Waymo cars after 1 miscalculation or mistake because it’s easy to blame a driverless car rather than when in an Uber, it’s just a human mistake and it’s forgivable.
Waymo is the leader in autonomous cars and is soon going to be competing with major ride-share apps like Uber and Lyft.
Waymo’s online team said “Whether it’s for a fun night out or just to get a break from driving, our riders get a clean vehicle every time and a driver with more than 20 million miles of experience on public roads.”
Ultimately, Waymo is a phenomenal method of transportation if you don’t have a vehicle, and it’s only improving day by day.