Self-driving cars are cruising around the streets of Los Angeles, and USC students are among the first to get a sneak peak, though the vehicles won’t be allowed on campus for the foreseeable future.
Waymo visited USC’s Shrine Auditorium on March 4 to hand out invite codes, tote bags and t-shirts, the last time they will do so in Los Angeles.
Waymo is a self-driving car company; as a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, it first began as “the Google self-driving car project” in 2009. Waymo became an independent company in 2016 and launched their “ride-hailing service” Waymo One in the Metro Phoenix area two years later.
The company received permission from the California Public Utilities Commission on March 1 to operate in the city of Los Angeles as well as “a large section of the San Francisco Peninsula,” according to Wired.
Waymo is a self-driving car company; as a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, it first began as “the Google self-driving car project” in 2009. Waymo became an independent company in 2016 and launched their “ride-hailing service” Waymo One in the Metro Phoenix area two years later.
Currently, Waymo One only operates in four cities. Waymo’s website features an interactive map of its service areas in Phoenix, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Waymo One is available in Phoenix to anyone with the app, but in San Francisco, you need to join the waitlist to get invited to a ride in a Waymo car. Similarly, rides in Los Angeles and Austin are only available to customers who have received special invite codes or secured a spot through the waitlist.
Logan Barth, a senior studying law, history and culture who attended the Shrine event, is from Scottsdale, Arizona – part of the Metro Phoenix area. Barth has seen Waymo cars for about a year and a half in his hometown, but hasn’t had the chance to ride in one yet.
“I’d like to ride in one because I’ve been seeing them so much,” he said. “I’m excited to actually see the technology in use being inside the car.”
On March 14, Waymo posted their future plans in Los Angeles on their blog Waypoint.
They plan to offer free rides within a 63 square mile area, and “transition to paid service in the coming weeks.” The company will then permanently allow customers to utilize the Waymo service by “gradually onboarding the more than 50,000 people on our [the] LA waitlist,” of which they say 15,000 rides have been completed.
For many self-driving car companies, the news hasn’t been as rosy.
In Oct. 2023, the California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended the permits that allowed General Motors-owned self-driving car company Cruise to utilize driverless cars. This suspension came after Cruise failed to properly disclose all details of an incident where a Cruise vehicle drove over a pedestrian that was in its path after being injured by a human driver in another hit-and-run accident. This prompted Cruise to pause their operations, and they have yet to restart.
Waymo’s self-driving cars have also been involved in incidents. On Feb. 5, at 10 p.m. a Waymo Jaguar car crashed into the gate at Watt Way and Exposition Boulevard on USC’s campus.
Tony Mazza, the Director of Transportation for USC Transportation, discussed this incident in a statement to Annenberg Media emailed, saying that Waymos are not allowed inside campus itself.
“It involved the car barely hitting the entrance gate at Watt. Waymo is required to report that to DMV, but neither DPS or my team even knew it happened since no damage occurred to our equipment,” Mazza wrote. “We have had discussions with Waymo and requested they set up a geofence around campus so that Waymo vehicles do not enter the streets inside campus, they have agreed to do so. Anyone using Waymo will be directed to pick-up locations outside the university campus.”
Despite these restrictions and incidents, some students still expressed excitement over self-driving cars.
“They’re probably overall a good thing because robots will eventually be smarter than people. So, I can imagine it would save a lot of accidents.” said Lauren Segal, a junior business administration and environmental studies double major. “People are just prone to errors with drunk driving and texting and just being distracted and robots eliminate those kinds of errors.”
Barth expressed his excitement over technological developments.
“I feel like self-driving cars are something that I dreamed of in my childhood,” Barth said. “So actually seeing them going around campus makes me excited for all the technology that we’ll see in the future.”
It’s a sentiment Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said she’s hopeful will be felt by others in the city in an emailed statement to Annenberg Media.
“Autonomous driving is no longer science fiction — it’s a real-world way of getting around for tens of thousands of people each week,” Mawakana said. “After receiving such a warm welcome from Angelenos, we’re so excited to bring the safety, comfort and consistency of our Waymo One service to more people across the city.”