Waymo taxis will take the freeway in select cities

Waymo says its autonomous vehicles are ready to drive its taxi service customers on freeways.

The Google-backed autonomous vehicle company made the announcement on Wednesday. Freeway service will begin first in the San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix and Los Angeles.

Waymo previously began testing freeway driving under human supervision in Phoenix as early as 2024.

“This has been a long time in the making,” Waymo co-CEO Dmitry Dolgov said, according to NBC News. “Freeway driving is one of those things that is very easy to learn but very hard to master when we are talking about full autonomy without a human driver as a backup and at large scale. So, it took time to get it right.”

The company said in announcing Freeway Access that it would be available to a “growing number” of riders in the initial cities. The service will eventually expand to other locations, including Austin and Atlanta.

Waymo says its robotaxis are safer than human drivers, according to company data. The company claims that its cars have had far fewer accidents involving pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists than human drivers.

Waymo has also been the subject of a federal security investigation. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recently announced it was reviewing an incident involving a Waymo that ran through a completely stopped school bus.

“Safety is our top priority as we provide hundreds of thousands of fully autonomous paid trips every week in some of the most challenging driving environments in America,” a Waymo spokesperson told Mashable. The spokesperson said Waymo will continue to work with NHTSA.

In May 2024, NHTSA began investigating Waymo for 22 reported incidents in which its autonomous vehicles collided with objects such as gates, chains, and parked vehicles. It appeared that the cars were also violating traffic safety control devices.

In November 2024, Waymo voluntarily recalled 1,212 of its self-driving taxis. The recalled cars, which comprised the company’s entire fleet at the time, received a software update in November designed to significantly reduce the chance of the Vemos colliding with stationary objects.

Waymo’s reach has grown rapidly in recent months, with London, Dallas and Nashville added to the list of cities it plans to serve in 2026.