Waymo suspends all freeway rides over safety

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Waymo said that it’s pausing its robotaxi services on freeways in the U.S.as it updates its software to improve performance around construction zones and flooded roads.Before the suspension, freeway operations were available in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Miami.

The company said that street and other off-highway operations of Waymos will continue.Business The driverless taxi company will begin offering rides on freeways for the first time in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Phoenix.The company first confirmed the temporary pause to Reuters, and said that it was working to integrate recent technical learnings into software and expects to resume these routes soon.

“We are committed to being good neighbors for our riders and our communities.As part of that commitment, we make proactive decisions including temporarily pausing aspects of our service.

We know riders count on us to get around, and we appreciate their patience as we work to get them where they’re going safely and reliably,” a Waymo spokesperson said in an email statement.The company also paused operations in Atlanta, after a Waymo stopped in flood water.In early May, about 3,800 of Waymos autonomous taxis were recalled after a software defect caused some vehicles to drive into flooded roadways.

The suspension comes at a time when the Alphabet-backed company, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., has increased its pace of expansion into a number of new cities in the U.S.and across the globe, and getting them on freeways and local airports is important for expansion.

Competitors Tesla and Zoox have been playing catchup but don’t match the scale of Waymo yet.The company said it has collected 170 million autonomous miles, with 13 times fewer injury-causing collisions compared with human drivers in the routes they operate in.

Waymo said it provides 500,000 trips every week, and aims to cross 1 mi...