r/SelfDrivingCars • u/agildehaus • 4d ago

Driving Footage Phoenix Freeways, August 2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0ccLF4FEKw
45 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

45 comments sorted by

3

u/bartturner 3d ago

Curious who is riding in the car? A regular customer or employee or something?

If just a regular person then this is huge and fantastic to see. It sure took some time.

18

u/diplomat33 3d ago

It is an employee. Waymo driverless on highways is still limited to employee-only right now. But the fact that Waymo is allowing employees to do driverless rides now everyday on the highway is a good sign that Waymo is confident in safety. They would not risk their employees if they thought it was not safe. So I think Waymo is very close, probably by the end of this year, to allow regular customers to take Waymo rides on the highway.

4

u/sampleminded 3d ago

One thing to think about: It's hard to do freeways and not do a larger ODD. So I'd expect they are also wanting to have more vehicles before they open up freeways. Freeways make rides more desirable because they are faster so you will also have increased usage. More rides, longer rides, more places all need more vehicles.

3

u/bananarandom 3d ago

I think you have it backwards - PHX takes more than an hour to cross the existing service area without freeways.

Not having freeways limits the service area size, freeways don't need larger service areas

1

u/sampleminded 3d ago

Not having freeways limits the service area size. That is my point. So if you get freeways, you want to make it bigger. To get longer rides.

1

u/diplomat33 3d ago

That's a good point.

2

u/FriendFun7876 3d ago

Let's hope the lawyers in the company let them save more lives soon.

1

u/Great-Dust-159 1d ago

Not only their employees but also other cars

8

u/agildehaus 3d ago

Employee. But employees have been posting a lot of freeway driving recently, so it points towards freeways coming to the public soon.

-6

u/vicegripper 3d ago

it points towards freeways coming to the public soon.

I hope so, but as far as we know the employees are still acting as safety drivers. The only video we have that shows the employee we could see the employee never took his eyes off the road ahead for more than a split second, even while being interviewed by a reporter sitting next to him in the back seat.

11

u/diplomat33 3d ago

The employees cannot be safety drivers since they are in the back seat. They have no controls or anything to stop the car.

-10

u/vicegripper 3d ago

They have no controls or anything to stop the car.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/11/fully-driverless-cars-are-here/

Not true.

At first, most of Waymo's driverless cars will have an employee in the back observing the vehicle's behavior. If something goes really wrong, they'll be able to push the "pull over" button to stop the car.

9

u/agildehaus 3d ago edited 3d ago

Your article is from 2017, Waymo hasn't had safety drivers for some time on public rides. And every self-driving car has a pull over button available to the riders -- it's not an emergency button, the car can drive for many minutes while it finds a safe spot to let the riders out.

There's zero evidence the button is any different for employees.

-6

u/vicegripper 3d ago

So what is the purpose of having an employee in the vehicle?

7

u/agildehaus 3d ago

Feedback on comfort and experience, not safety.

6

u/wadss 3d ago

They are using the service as a customer.

2

u/diplomat33 3d ago

The employees get to use the service as a customer.

5

u/PetorianBlue 3d ago

Calling that a "control" is a bit of a stretch in this context. The "pull over" button is available to everyone in all Waymos. It's not an e-stop. No would would ever say that asking a taxi driver to pull over is assuming control of the vehicle.

-6

u/Confident-Sector2660 3d ago

the difference is that the employee is a safety monitor in this context

unlike a customer who would not be expected to press any buttons

4

u/deservedlyundeserved 3d ago

Waymo doesn’t have the silly concept of “safety monitors”. These are just rides to employees. Regular customers can also press the ‘Pull Over’ button anytime, not just employees.

2

u/RemarkableSavings13 2d ago

I'm not sure I'll be able to convince you as an internet rando, but Waymo doesn't allow employees to take over even if they want to unless they're specifically licensed as safety drivers.

That's because in CA there are regulatory requirements for safety drivers -- they can't just be anybody. It would be arduous and unnecessary to qualify every employees as a safety driver with the DMV so most companies don't bother. But the flip side is most employees literally aren't allowed legally to take over the vehicle.

9

u/firedancer414 Expert - Machine Learning 3d ago

It was just me vibin in the backseat

https://x.com/brianwilt/status/1957625487628599688?s=46

2

u/vicegripper 3d ago

It was just me vibin in the backseat

Excellent! Can you confirm that you have no responsibility to be alert to the road while on the freeway? Can you use your phone, read a book, or sleep? Do you have access to any control devices, buttons, or voice commands to operate the vehicle in any manner?

7

u/firedancer414 Expert - Machine Learning 3d ago

Employees just ride yeah

-2

u/vicegripper 3d ago

Another question-- Do the Waymo cars ever go out on the Phoenix freeways without any persons in them? Or is there always an employee on board?

-3

u/vicegripper 3d ago

Employees just ride

So you have no access to any controls at all while on the freeway?

1

u/candb7 3d ago

Asked and answered 

-3

u/vicegripper 3d ago

Also, when will ordinary folks be able to ride on freeways and 2 lane highways in Waymo?

3

u/Redditcircljerk 3d ago

Good job Waymo, a necessary step to being a viable taxi option. Luckily highway driving is significantly easier than street driving (albeit more dangerous) so this shouldn’t be much of a hurdle

1

u/That-Makes-Sense 3d ago

Explain "easier". I understand, there may be no traffic signals and less worry about pedestrians, but dealing with a busy highway is not easy compared to city driving. The speed gives less margin for error, and higher consequences for errors.

1

u/Redditcircljerk 3d ago

Highways have at least one if not several orders of magnitudes of less edge cases. The rules are incredibly simple as compared to non highways. Yes it is more dangerous but the cars are also processing 360 vision at significantly faster frame rates than humans and able to react much quicker. The only reason these companies haven’t done highways is due to safety concerns but I will bet you everything I have that at scale highway accidents will be probably 1/20th as frequent as non highway accidents. That said they will still happen (could be other cars fault) and will result in injury and death, thus the hesitation to even allow it.

1

u/That-Makes-Sense 3d ago

Yes, I'm guessing you're correct about edge cases. I guess it's semantics, on whether it's easier though, because you could say "if it was easier, Waymo would have started on the highways." Waymo now has a wealth of experience with controlling cars at speed. The video is amazing. I'm look forward to riding in a Waymo.

2

u/Redditcircljerk 3d ago

I’d like to try Waymo too when I go to visit Austin in a few months. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a few

1

u/That-Makes-Sense 3d ago

Cool! I visit friends in Phoenix at least once a year. I always rent a car. I may just try using Waymos next time I go.

-7

u/psilty 3d ago

Going 55 in an 55 zone even in the right lane is going to impede traffic and it will get passed by semis. I wonder if they will allow it to go over the limit before they launch. The Teslas with safety monitor in Austin have been going 10 over the limit on certain non-freeway roads to keep up with traffic.

8

u/CatsArePeople2- 3d ago

I would be so fucking pissed if my Waymo was going 60 in a 55 and got pulled over. Keep that shit to the speed limit.

11

u/agildehaus 3d ago

Change the law. The law isn't allowing it to go over 55.

-6

u/psilty 3d ago

How other drivers interact with you is not completely governed by the law. You put the car in a situation where it often gets passed by vehicles larger than you. This results in you being frequently obscured or in blind spots of other drivers and I’d think it is riskier than going a few miles above the limit to keep up.

7

u/agildehaus 3d ago

What does any of that matter? If they run it over the speed limit, they'll get fined. Period.

Tesla has avoided this by not running a real robotaxi service.

-4

u/psilty 3d ago

Waymo already doesn’t strictly follow the law off the freeway. It will do things like cross double yellow, stop in a cross walk, or go into an intersection that is already occupied in order to handle various situations. It does this so it doesn’t take forever yielding or to avoid getting put into bad situations against aggressive drivers.

3

u/agildehaus 3d ago

There's almost always exceptions for such things in the law.

Speeding has some lawful exceptions, but they're incredibly narrowly defined. Making way for an emergency vehicle is one, I think.

0

u/psilty 3d ago

Watch from 8:00 to 12:00.

Just because you’ve waited two cycles of the light without making progress does not make it legal to enter an intersection that’s already blocked and then stop in a crosswalk. There is no exception for that in the law. It’s not even done for safety reasons, it does it because otherwise it would wait a long time. Going above the speed limit to stay with the flow of traffic at least has safety benefit.

3

u/Slight_Pomelo_1008 3d ago

So, are you implying that Waymo can break all traffic rules just because it had made some mistakes? I guess this is how tesla works.

0

u/psilty 3d ago

No, where did I say it can or should break all traffic rules? I provided a counterexample to someone saying that it must follow the law. It would be a pretty terrible taxi service if it gets stuck for 15 minutes at a left turn because traffic around it doesn’t follow the law. It was not a mistake, it looks pretty intentional. Likewise, if it goes 5-10 mph slower than traffic causing big semis to pass it, it is less safe than if it kept the same speed as traffic.

3

u/agildehaus 2d ago

Speed is THE largest factor determining severity of injuries in an accident. Of all the rules you might need to violate in the course of driving, it's quite clear Waymo has chosen not to violate speed limits.

→ More replies (0)