America's first ever fleet of self-driving cars hits the road

The driver-less future of transportation could be arriving soon in Phoenix. Autonomous vehicle company Waymo, a division of Google's parent company Alphabet, has launched a fleet of self-driving cars without backup drivers in Arizona. The company's chief executive John Krafcik said customers will soon be able to hop rides. "Fully self-driving cars are here", Mr Krafcik said during a tech conference in Lisbon, Portugal, lauding the development as "a big step forward to achieving our ultimate goal: safer roads, and better access to transportation for all". According to Waymo, some cars that have already been plying roads in the Phoenix area have now been switched to fully automatic mode -- meaning there is no test driver behind the wheel. The company said it is removing that safeguard after its autonomous vehicles have test-driven some 3.5 million miles.