Google's Waymo invites members of public to trial self-driving vehicles

Google's self-driving car spin-off, Waymo, is opening up its vehicles to members of the public for the first time. Residents of Phoenix, Arizona, are being invited to apply to join the trial, which will see "hundreds" of participants being given full-time access to the fleet of600 self-driving minivans that Waymo intends to operate in the city. "Over the course of this trial, we'll be accepting hundreds of people with diverse backgrounds and transportation needs who want to ride in and give feedback about Waymo's self-driving cars," Waymo's head, John Krafcik, said in a blogpost. "Rather than offering people one or two rides, the goal of this programme is to give participants access to our fleet every day, at any time, to go anywhere within an area that's about twice the size of San Francisco." While Waymo's head office is still in Google's hometown of Mountain View, California, the state of Arizona has been aggressively courting self-driving car researchers, lowering regulatory burdens and even embarking on Twitter campaigns aimed at wooing companies from Silicon Valley.