Driverless taxis from Waymo will be on London’s roads next year, US firm announces
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/15/driverless-taxis-from-waymo-will-be-on-londons-roads-next-year-us-firm-announces
Posted by ghostposthusky
Driverless taxis from Waymo will be on London’s roads next year, US firm announces
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/15/driverless-taxis-from-waymo-will-be-on-londons-roads-next-year-us-firm-announces
Posted by ghostposthusky
35 Comments
Inevitably one of these things will be involved in a crash and it will be a shitshow when it comes to liability.
Another American tech giant invited in to bend us over (and pay zero tax)
The safety data from these things has been brilliant so far. 92% fewer pedestrian collisions than comparable human benchmarks and 78% fewer bicycle collisions. Mass deployment of this tech could transform urban cycling without the government spending a penny.
https://waymo.com/safety/impact
To me these are obviously going to lead to us not having the ability to drive. They will drive better and more safer than us, less people will die. It will become dangerous to drive yourself and they’ll ban it. Probably in our lifetimes
Can you tell it to stop whilst you run into the shop for a pack of crisps
So they’re still going to have “safety drivers” in them, but I guess they can pay them less as they’re not really driving? Or they’re just there until the firms can lobby for them to be completely autonomous.
Cannae wait to see how the voice control works… the burnistoun bit with the voice activated lift comes to mind.
I was just in San Francisco and took a couple of Waymo journeys. Waymo is awesome and feels genuinely futuristic. The cars drive better than most taxi drivers. And they were the same price as regular taxis/ubers. The data shows they are very safe.
I wouldn’t ban it if it was me. But I’m just saying I’m not bothered if it was either. Obviously people should have the choice
I’m all for it personally. Can’t wait for this to happen. I’d travel to London just to ride around in these all day.
Why do we want these?
Will it be cheaper for us? Or are we just going to kill an industry, make tons of people unemployed and create one more billionaire who doesn’t pay his tax.
Huge win, we need to embrace technology. Just a shame there’s no British competitor, same as for electric cars.
Pretty cool.
Hopefully can play your own music like Uber when it started instead of listening to the driver talking on the phone the whole time
I am going to fart so much in there and there is no way of waymo knowing.
Will they fix the ones that go to a car park and sound their horns all night before they come here or will some poor sods in the UK have to suffer that as well?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/c17gqverg99o
Wonderful. Another tech ‘innovation’ that will lead to loads more people being made redundant…. What a fantastically dystopian, insipid future we are sliding into….
Can’t wait. Machines can drive better and more safely.
I guarantee this will end with the cars being hated by everyone.
London is confusing as shit, half the road markings just end randomly and you have to keep your head on a swivel.
Their traffic safety limits will make them inoperable,
Have you seen one of them in a crazy busy car park in the US, they can’t handle it. They just stop if they detect someone getting too close and those carparks are nothing like as bad as some of London’s traffic.
I’m no way against auto taxi’s but why London? Surely airport runs and motorways would be best.
Honestly hate the future we are building, these cause massive traffic in San Francisco when they get stuck, imagine the 2 way on Lexington st in Soho clogged up with these stupid things, pathetic
Why are we so desperate to take away everything, they want us all like the humans in wall-e
I’ve seen 3 of them training near Waterloo in the last month
So how long till drunk driving will finally be legal?
There’s waymo issues with these cars then we think
Also I genuinely feel I have got more anti American when it comes to their private finance, big tech and big capital putting its footprint of influence into our economy and society and politics.
We’re getting really stupid anti-science anti economic wedge issues floating over here which I don’t like.
That said would prefer waymo over Tesla
Tesla starlink and X need to be restricted or banned or made to fit British standards and values because their founder/owner has been deliberately screwing with our social cohesion for a couple years now and the only language he understands is money loss and anti trust
One problem with these things is they surely have the program in the trolley problem at some level.
Though maybe that’s better than a human making that decision themselves (or not)
This country won’t even allow people to to buy electric scooters – I don’t see this happening.
I was in California in July and tried one out – I surprisingly, felt a lot more safer in one of these than I did in some human driven Uber/Lyfts. But then again it was limited to only a few miles in Hollywood and didn’t go onto any highways.
More unemployment then. Or less self-employment.
Marvellous.
Lol. You’re telling me tech that struggles to work in california will magically work in London of all places?
I’ve been seeing a lot of test cars for self driving going around, wonder if they are for this. Would be interesting to know how they deal with bikes since they are less common in the US cities
It ain’t going to work in London. I’ll eat my hat if it doesn’t cause utter chaos
Nice if it works… but what about all the humans displaced from these jobs? Do they all transfer to Deliveroo or become brain surgeons and AI coders?
Next in the crosshairs will be delivery vehicles, trains… then HGV point to point. A quick ChatGPT shows that there are over a million such jobs in the UK – a significant portion (around 3%) of the working population would ultimately be unemployed by replacing driving jobs.
Amazing – had the opportunity to use Wayno in San Francisco earlier this year. Absolutely amazing. Highly recommended.
I rode in these in San Francisco. The weirdest thing about it was how normal it felt!
It was obviously a bit of a buzz to see it all working but other than that it just felt ‘normal’, which is exactly what you’d want from such a thing.
I’m very curious how it handles the much narrower UK roads though.
Self-driving vehicles existed long ago! It was a horse and cart and after a few trips, the horse was able to find its way back whilst the driver took a nap.
how does this work in terms of parking violations, who would be held responsible? what happens if a waymo car breaks down?
theyre unsafe and pose a threat to the livelihoods of tens of thousands. for some odd reason most of the people here are onboard with another of Silicon Valley’s ridiculous contraptions. and what about the fact theres cameras inside the car itself? what happens to that footage?
I really don’t like this. I don’t think I’m just afraid of change, though there is a bit of that.
First, I don’t think it will work well. UK roads have a lot more negotiation by convention for stuff like who gets to go in a street that is full of parked cars on both sides, or pulling out at a junction when you’re flashed in, and autonomous vehicles are likely to be too conservative and block the road. An autonomous car can’t give eye contact. I’m not sure how much I’d trust them around pedestrian crossings, bikes etc – sure, they do ok with them on US roads, but road conditions and usage patterns are quite different.
My bigger issue is that an autonomous car is still a car. Even if you exclude safety entirely, they still have all the other problems of cars on the road, especially in cities where cars are an impractical waste of space. It might even be worse because presumably these cars will be driving around empty between hires, so they’ll do even more journeys than people driving themselves.
If only all this innovation and investment could be put into public transport (especially outside London) and biking.