Removing human drivers isn't only a cost-cutting strategy; Waymo riders prefer the solitude, the staff writer Molly Fischer says. A Waymo offers a unique experience: you ride as a passenger behind or next to an empty driver's seat, the steering wheel turning as though handled by a ghost. The staff writer Molly Fischer has been reporting on Waymo, and she tells David Remnick that though the statistics are hard to parse, Waymos appear to be safer than cars driven by humans. Fans of Waymo prefer not putting themselves in the temporary custody of a stranger, but, Fischer says, this appeal is precisely what makes Waymos' glitches scariest. Now that her reporting is done, Remnick wants to know: Would she take one of the robot taxis by choice?

Waymos are safer than human drivers. Why are people heckling them, egging them, and smashing in their windshields? The wheel turns: when one of Waymo's autonomous vehicles is in motion, its steering wheel moves, too--twitching out the car's maneuvers from the usual position, facing the front-left seat. Generally, on American roads, this is known as the driver's seat. In a Waymo, such a designation is arbitrary. The Waymo Driver, as the company calls its autonomous-driving system--a force guided by sensors, cameras, custom maps, and machine learning--is all around. No one is allowed to sit in that front-left seat. Before I'd ridden in a Waymo, I had wondered about the wheel. What was it doing up there? One answer, a boring one, is as follows: it is fulfilling a legal mandate. Existing safety standards assume that cars have steering wheels, and, because Waymo's vehicles are regulated as cars, so do they. Besides, the company has spent much of its decade-long existence retrofitting normal cars with self-driving technology; the wheel is largely a vestigial inheritance. "We were very curious about whether people would react positively or negatively to the fact that the wheel turned," Megan Neese, Waymo's "Head of Insights," told me recently. We were sitting in her employer's San Francisco offices. Neese has been at the company since 2019, when it began offering fully driverless rides to the public; she was tasked with gauging passenger reactions. It was not hard to see how a wheel steering on its own might look spooky--the suggestion of a ghost in the machine. Yet, to Neese's surprise, riders reported that it reassured them. It seemed to convey that the car's actions were "recognizable; they're relatable; they're continuing to happen." The Driver doesn't need them.)

Self-driving cars from Waymo, Zoox, and Tesla are studded with cameras and sensors. Some of them are pointing at riders. One afternoon this past summer, a self-driving Waymo pulled into a parking lot in San Mateo County, California, and stayed there until the police arrived. Local cops had gotten a 911 call from Waymo staffers--humans, it should be said --who were viewing the car's passengers through cameras installed inside the vehicle. It looked like two teens were shooting a black handgun out the window of the vehicle, playing with it and drinking between shots, a police report said.

Mashable Selects Look Up Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Say More Safety Net Versus Creator Playbook In My Bag Trending Now Back to School Good Connection: Uplifting stories for a digital age Switch Off All Series Neal joined Mashable's Social Good team in 2024, editing and writing stories about digital culture and its effects on the environment and marginalized communities. He is the former editorial director of The Advocate and Out magazines, has contributed to the Los Angeles Times, Curbed, and Los Angeles magazine, and is a recipient of the Sarah Pettit Memorial Award for LGBTQ Journalist of the Year Award from the National Gay and Lesbian Journalists Association (NLGJA). He lives in Los Angeles with his family. Waymo just announced a new transit rewards program that incentivizes pairing robotaxi rides with public transit. The transit rewards program is now available to Waymo employees in the San Francisco Bay Area, but it will open to the Bay Area public in a few weeks, according to the Google-owned autonomous rideshare company.

Autonomous car manufacturers have long claimed that self-driving vehicles would reduce traffic accidents. Thus far, the stats are largely in their favor. According to a report by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), Google's Waymo robotaxis were involved in roughly 65 percent fewer car crashes than human drivers last year. Waymo's own internal statistics, meanwhile, claim that the autonomous vehicles (AVs) reduce accidents with serious injuries by 94 percent. Some critics are understandably dubious, however, noting that more testing needs to be done before anyone can meaningfully certify these safety gains.

Waymo has announced that it's coming to Singapore, thereby expanding its presence in Asia and in regions outside of the US as a whole. Over the coming months, its first Jaguar I-PACE vehicles will be arriving on the island nation as the company prepares for future operations. Throughout 2027, Waymo's specialists will manually drive its vehicles on Singapore's streets to map them, and the company will make changes to its system to account for the country's road geometry and weather patterns. Waymo expects to start offering rides to the Singaporean public in 2028 through its own app. The company started testing its driverless cars in Tokyo in 2025, making the sprawling Japanese metropolis its first international location.

The company will partner with Japanese taxi firms Go and Nihon Kotsu to start a fully autonomous service in Tokyo in 2027. Alphabet's Waymo plans to bring its robotaxis to Japan next year as the U.S. market leader continues its global expansion. Waymo will partner with Japanese taxi firms Go and Nihon Kotsu to start a fully autonomous service in Tokyo in 2027, it said Tuesday. The companies expect to start with a small fleet and then expand gradually to 100 vehicles. Shares of Go, which manages Japan's top taxi-booking app, rose as much as 9.7% on Tuesday. The stock is up more than 40% since its initial public offering in June.

Waymo and its fleet of robotaxis has made its way into Nevada, starting with Las Vegas. The company announced its expansion would be limited to a 24-mile service area surrounding the Las Vegas Strip, but would later widen the service footprint to cover more of the surrounding Clark County. According to Waymo, the robotaxi fleet on Vegas roads will mostly be the Ojai all-electric minivans that are equipped with the sixth-generation Waymo Driver hardware meant to handle harsh weather conditions. Last month, the Nevada Transportation Authority approved Waymo's application for an Autonomous Vehicle Network Company permit, leading up to its service launch in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas. The state authority also granted Tesla and Uber the same approvals, meaning those visiting should expect to see more driverless cars going up and down the strip.

What happens when driverless cars break the law? In 2026, driverless cars like and human drivers exist in two different legal realities. More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. Regulators are in a race to catch up to AVs, which are increasingly being spotted breaking laws that would land human drivers in hot water. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week.

Things to Do in L.A. Tap to enable a layout that focuses on the article. Waymo pulls over, calls cops on juvenile riders who had'ghost gun,' authorities say This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here . See more from the L.A. Times in Google Search. Two young people riding in an autonomous vehicle were arrested in San Francisco after authorities allegedly found them in possession of an illegal "ghost gun."