Waymo begins freeway rides for the public
48 comments
·November 12, 2025mmmlinux
prismatix
I had a similar experience. A few months ago, I was in the city for a weekend and took Waymo for most of my rides. The one time I chose to use Lyft/Uber, the driver floored it before we even had a chance to shut the door or get buckled! The rest of the time we took Waymo.
I rarely use ride-sharing but other experiences include having been in a FSD Tesla Uber where the driver wasn't paying attention to the road the entire time (hands off the wheel, looking behind him, etc.).
I don't know if I trust Waymo cars with my life, but at least there are SOME standards, compared to the natural variance of humans.
world2vec
An interesting prospect is that a bunch of autonomous cars on the freeways might have a meaningful impact in preventing traffic jams (specifically those "phantom jams") [0] simply by driving in a calm and pondered way always at a constant distance.
NullHypothesist
This is a huge sign of confidence that they think they can do this safely and at scale... Freeways might appear "easy" on the surface, but there are all sorts of long tail edge-cases that make them insanely tricky to do confidently without a driver. This will unlock a lot for them with all of the smaller US cities (where highways are essential) they've announced plans for over the next year or so.
embedding-shape
> Freeways might appear "easy" on the surface, but there are all sorts of long tail edge-cases that make them insanely tricky to do confidently without a driver
Maybe my memory is failing me, but I seem to remember people saying the exact opposite here on HN when Tesla first announced/showed off their "self-driving but not really self-driving" features, saying it'll be very easy to get working on the highways, but then everything else is the tricky stuff.
xnx
Highways are on average a much more structured and consistent environment, but every single weird thing (pedestrians, animals, debris, flooding) that occurs on streets also happens on highways. When you're doing as many trips and miles as Waymo, once-in-a-lifetime exceptions happen every day.
On highways the kinetic energy is much greater (Waymo's reaction time is superhuman, but the car can't brake any harder.) and there isn't the option to fail safe (stop in place) like their is on normal roads.
notatoad
the difficult part of the highways is the interchanges, not the straight shots between interchanges. and iirc, tesla didn't do interchanges at the time people were criticizing them for only doing the easiest part of self-driving.
sjducb
Slow roads are easier because you can rely on a simple emergency breaking system for safety. You have a radar that looks directly in front of the car and slams on the breaks if you’re about to crash. This prevents almost all accidents below 35mph.
The emergency breaking system gives you a lot of room for error in the rest of the system.
Once you’re going faster than 35mph this approach no longer works. You have lots of objects on the pavement that are false positives for the emergency breaking system so you have to turn it off.
0_____0
Waymo (prev. Chauffeur) were cruising freeways long before they were doing city streets. Problem was that you can't do revenue autonomous service with freeway-only driving.
The real reason I see for not running freeways until now is that the physical operational domain of for street-level autonomous operations was not large enough to warrant validating highway driving to their current standard.
terminalshort
Freeways are easier than surface streets. The reason they held off allowing highways is because Waymo wants to minimize the probability of death for PR purposes. They figure they can get away with a lot of wrecks as long as they don't kill people.
repsilat
"Easier" is probably the right one-word generalization, but worth noting that there are quite different challenges. Stopping distance is substantially greater, so "dead halt" isn't as much of a panacea as it is in dense city environments. And you need to have good perception of things further away, especially in front of you, which affects the sensors you use.
andy99
Also on surface roads you can basically stop in the middle of the street and be annoying but not particularly dangerous. You can’t just stop safely dead in the middle of a freeway.
jordanb
There's also the risk of a phantom breaking event causing a big pileup. The PR of a Waymo causing a large cascading accident would be horrible.
xnx
Do Waymo's phantom brake? Given the number of trips hey do I would imagine there would be a ton of videos if that was happening.
null
lumens
Perhaps more a reaction to pressure from Tesla; the latest FSD builds show full autonomy is coming very soon. Without highway driving, Waymo would quickly be seen as a distant second in the race when the safety driver is removed from Robotaxis in Austin (supposedly before EOY 2025).
NullHypothesist
Looks like they've opened up SJC Airport, too! SFO imminent?
s1mon
How will Waymos handle speed limits on highways? In the city, they seem to stick to the rules. A large percentage of drivers in the bay area, including non-emergency police, drive well above the legal limit regularly. Unless Waymo sticks to the slow lane, it's going to be a weird issue.
cortesoft
Luckily this won't be a problem in Los Angeles, because traffic prevents you from ever going over the speed limit.
tintor
That is the problem for "well above the legal limit" speeding drivers.
Hopefully highway Waymos can automatically detect and report such aggressive drivers in real-time.
dogman144
Why is that the problem for above the legal speed limit drivers?
A slow fleet of Waymo’s will impact your average 5-10 over same as your 20 over, and that’ll collectively impact traffic.
The implicit assumption you and many other in tech share is humans must adapt to the tech protocol, and not the other way around.
After 20 years of growing negative externalities from this general approach, which I see baked into your comment - are we seriously about to let this occur all over again with a new version of tech?
Fool me once, fool me twice… I think we’re at fool me 10 times and do it again in terms of civic trust of tech in its spaces.
gs17
That's a great way to make them targets for vandalism. I'm in a city they're about to get in to (Nashville), and if the snitch-mobile tattled on everyone (the highways here that are officially 55 are "really" 75 with some exceptions, and going the speed limit can end up being more dangerous), sensors would start getting bullet holes.
Of course, unlike the normal car break-ins here, the cops might do something about them.
andy99
Sounds like you’ve never driven on a highway. Taking some imaginary moral high ground doesn’t make one any less dangerous.
toss1
No, it is not only a problem for "'well above the legal limit' speeding drivers"; it is a problem for you, and the solution requires more thought than the "just follow the rules" that you put into your post.
There are many instances where the entire mass of traffic across three or four lanes is 10-20mph above the stated limit, e.g., going 75-85mph in a 66mph posted area.
It may not be legal, but it is reality. And when it is everyone, it is not only "aggressive" drivers. It is everyone. And one driver thinking they will change the situation only makes it worse.
If you are going 20-30mph below the speed of traffic you are at least as much a hazard to yourself and everyone around you as going 20-30mph above the speed of traffic, and the stated speed limit has nothing to do with it.
Going substantially slower than traffic, even in the slow lane with flashers on, nearly all of the threats and actions are overtaking you and coming from behind you, meaning to see and react to most of the developing situations, you must be driving through your rear-view mirrors.
And the situation you create can be very deadly, as one car can change lanes to avoid you, revealing you late to the next car, which barely changes lanes, and further reduces time for the next, who hits you and starts the pile-up.
It is not only their problem, it is yours too. Sure, you may be legally in the right, but you have still caused yourself to get hit.
What my grandfather explained to me is still correct:
"You never want to be dead right."
embedding-shape
Indeed, and I'm guessing the Waymos have forward facing cameras + know their own speed? Feels like a natural jump to begin automatically reporting cars that are speeding past them to the police, with a camera snapshot of the plate, with everything else censored.
mkinsella
In the few times I’ve seen a Waymo on the freeway in the Bay Area, they have always been in the slow lane and driving 55-65 MPH.
jeffbee
If you watch the videos that insiders have been posting, it never exceeds the speed limits.
If you watch the videos more carefully, you will notice the people who speed by at 85 MPH later enter the screen again, because that is the nature of freeway traffic.
I predict that a few hundred of these on the road will measurably improve safety and decrease severe congestion by being that one sane driver that defuses stop-and-go catastrophes. In fact I think CHP should just contract with them to pace 101 in waves.
gs17
> In fact I think CHP should just contract with them to pace 101 in waves.
"Waves" are really what we would want them to prevent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_wave
The autonomous cars can prevent these waves from forming, which would get people to their destinations faster than speeding.
aworks
I was on 101 during evening rush hour, speeding along like everyone. Then I saw brake lights from a Waymo. Later followed by all the surrounding cars. Interesting that it was the first to detect a slowdown.
greesil
I have seen a Waymo do a very stupid thing where it darted across a busy street, and it left very little margin of error for the oncoming traffic, which happened to be a loaded dump truck that could not have stopped. The dump truck driver was clearly surprised. It was a move that I never would have made as a driver. Did they dial the aggression up? I'm sure they're safer than humans in aggregate as there are some dumb humans out there but it's not infallible.
sagarm
Waymos do seem to have gotten a lot more aggressive.
brokencode
Waymo continues to improve every year, but dumb drivers never will.
izzydata
It is probably possible to get drivers to improve if the incentives were there or if they had no choice due to external factors. I bet it would be cheaper than money spent on self driving tech too.
Or public transit on a track.
sagarm
Drivers hate enforcement, and they vote.
jeffbee
American drivers specifically can be improved. Every other country stands as an existence proof of that.
bronco21016
I don’t live in a served market yet so I haven’t yet tried Waymo. However I have used SuperCruise and BlueCruise from GM and Ford.
What I’ve noticed from those other systems is that a human in the loop makes the system so much more comfortable. I’ve had times where I can see the red lights ahead and the system is not yet slowing because the car immediately in front of me isn’t slowing yet. It’s unsettling when the automated system brakes at the last moment.
Because of this experience the highway has been the line in the sand for me personally. Surface streets where you’re rarely traveling more than 45 mph are far less likely to lead to catastrophic injury vs a mistake at 70 mph.
I don’t think Waymo is necessarily playing fast and loose with their tech but it will be interesting how this plays out. A few fatal accidents could be a fatal PR blow to their roll out. I’m also very curious to see how the system will handle human takeover. Stopping in the middle of a freeway is extremely dangerous. Other drivers can have a lapse in attention and getting smoked by a semi traveling 65 mph is not going to be a good day.
Workaccount2
I'm not sure about Supercruise (although I am pretty sure its the same), but I know blue cruise is only available in places where there are no stop lights, and that is pretty much 95% interstates only. Supercruise and blue cruise are way under Tesla's FSD, and Tesla is a bit of a ways under Waymo.
You may be thinking of the ACC these cars offer, which is a standard feature, but different than their premium "self-driving" services they offer.
huevosabio
In my experience, Waymo's driving style is more comfortable than most humans.
rubicon33
Honestly you need to try Waymo. It’s in a league of its own.
paganel
No cats on freeways, so they’re safe in that regard. Any word back from Alphabet on the cat their machines killed in SF?
xnx
The gap between Waymo's service and Tesla's public beta test keeps getting larger.
m0llusk
All of the serious problems I have seen with Waymo navigation so far have had to do with busy urban streets. Trying to make use of blocked non through way alleys, turning around in driveways when other vehicles are exiting, coming to a complete dead stop on busy one way streets, failing to brake predictably for pedestrians walking into lanes, suddenly backing up a half block from stopped at a red light in order to change lanes, and so on. Freeways are a simplified driving environment that should suit current technologies well.
I was in SF a few weekend ago and rode both Waymo and normal Lyft style taxi cars. the Waymo was a better experience in every single way. One of the Lyfts i was in drove on the shoulder for a while like it was a lane. The Waymos were just smooth consistent driving. No aggressive driving to get you dumped off so they can get to the next fair.