PHOENIX — Humans won't be the only ones driving on Phoenix freeways soon.
Waymo, the autonomous driving tech company, announced on Monday that it would begin testing its driverless cars on Phoenix freeways in the coming weeks.
The company plans to start by offering its employees "rider-only" trips on Loop 101 and Loop 202, during which they'll gather data and information about the experience.
Typically, self-driving cars will avoid freeways and faster roadways in favor of lower-speed streets. While critics have cited this avoidance as proof that this tech isn't ready for highways, Waymo previously rolled out a driverless truck program on Texas freeways, but shifted to a passenger-oriented approach.
"Autonomous driving is relatively technically easier than driving off highway," Arizona State University Associate Professor Yezhou Yang said.
Yang studies autonomous vehicles. Despite faster speeds, he said the highways present less challenges, including no pedestrians and unmapped areas.
"The amount of navigations the vehicle actually perceives on highways are much less," Yang said.
Yang told 12News self-driving cars could improve traffic efficiency, but first people need to trust the technology.
"It's a small step for Waymo to push to highway, but I think it's a big step for the private and public to align expectations and being able to push the adoption of autonomous vehicles in the long run," Yang said.
Previous Waymo riders said they were open to the idea of self-driving cars on the freeway.
"I think I'm really comfortable with that," Taylor Morales said. "I feel completely safe, just as if it was a driver, an Uber or a Lyft."
Others said they aren't comfortable riding in or around autonomous cars.
"You can't trust it," Jerome Martin said. "Just dangerous. You can't put trust into something that can't think. So, it can dysfunction, malfunction."
Waymo recently expanded its service area in the Valley to cover about 225 square miles of metro Phoenix, Tempe and parts of Mesa and Chandler. According to data from the company, their autonomous vehicles demonstrated an 85% reduction in crashes that resulted in injury, and a 57% reduction in police-reported crashes compared to human drivers.
"[Employees] will provide invaluable feedback about the service and rider experience during freeway trips before we welcome Waymo One riders," the company said in a blog post.
There's no timeline of when freeway rides will be offered to the public.
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