PA: Waymo, meet Pittsburgh: Are driverless taxis ready for Steel City streets?

Waymo is coming to Pittsburgh, but one thing is for sure — Pittsburgh is not the Bay Area.

While San Franciscans may by now be used to the sight of a taxi with no driver, such a scene will be novel here, a city known for its bridges, tunnels and confounding grid plan.

In December, the autonomous ride-hailing service based in Mountain View, Calif., announced its expansion to Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, St. Louis and Baltimore. Waymo robotaxis are already making their way around Downtown with a driver operating them (for now), and people are posting sightings to Reddit.

"Safety is fundamental to everything we do," said Ethan Teicher, a Waymo spokesperson. "Waymo provides hundreds of thousands of rides every week and is involved in over 90% fewer serious injury crashes compared to drivers where we operate. Our riders appreciate the safety and consistency of our driving, as well as the convenience, privacy and magic of our fully autonomous vehicles.

"We'll take the same deliberate, rigorous approach to serving the public in Pittsburgh as we have in our other service areas."

The robotaxis have been tested in Phoenix, San Diego, Minneapolis and Miami, plus other locations. But Pittsburgh has an infamously less intuitive grid. Roads and bridges curve and climb around the city's hills, valleys and rivers.

On social media, Pittsburghers have expressed concern about Waymo's ability to safely navigate the Fort Pitt Tunnel, for instance, or avoid causing traffic in an already congested ecosystem.

Still, Waymo does operate or train in Tampa, Boston and Los Angeles, a few other cities that are known for tricky grid structures, bridges or rolling topography.

In July, Waymo announced its completion of 100 million fully autonomous miles — "that's 200 trips to the Moon and back," the Instagram caption said.

Waymo safety data shows its robotaxi had "90% fewer serious injury or worse crashes" than the average human driver "over the same distance in our operating cities." These numbers are not indicative of fault, meaning crashes when a Waymo was a "bystander" or "secondary" to a crash are also factored in.

Data also reports Waymo was involved in "83% fewer injury-causing crashes" and "92% fewer pedestrian crashes with injuries" than an average human driver.

Policing a car with no driver

"So far, I would say their track record is pretty good if you compare them to an average U.S. driver," said Erick Guerra, associate dean for research at the University of Pennsylvania's Weitzman School of Design. He specializes in the interplay between urban landscapes, travel behavior and transportation infrastructure.

However, he said such comparison would not be fair.

"They're substantially safer than an average U.S. driver [but] they should be compared to a professional driver operating a new vehicle, because that's essentially what it is. It's a taxi," Mr. Guerra said. "Professional drivers get in fewer crashes per mile driven, and people driving newer cars also tend to crash a lot less."

Still, he said, Waymo appears to be "net safer" than human drivers, and the technology has "a lot of potential promise." As for public policy, he said, we are failing to move in the direction of reducing fatalities.

Policy is a tricky thing with autonomous vehicles. Protocol is different when there is no driver to ask for license and registration.

For that reason, the Washington, D.C.-based Governors Highway Safety Association — a nonprofit "representing the state and territorial highway safety offices that implement federal grant programs to address behavioral highway safety issues" — launched an online safety training course for first responders in partnership with Waymo.

The online course is free and has three modules: a rundown on Waymo's operations and response to police operations, detailed instructions on how to interact with a Waymo, and safety procedures for first responders "who need to extricate passengers or disconnect a vehicle's battery."

Following the self-paced training, participants take an online quiz and receive a downloadable certificate of completion.

"Waymo and other AVs can unlock tremendous safety and mobility benefits for everyone," said GHSA CEO Jonathan Adkins in the December release. "We owe it to our first responders — the first line of defense when there's a problem on the road — to make sure they are prepared to safely interact with these vehicles."

Wary of Waymo

News of Waymo's arrival in Pittsburgh has elicited mixed reactions.

When the Post-Gazette published news of the company's announcement in early December, a corresponding Instagram post was flooded with comments of frustration and support.

"We literally just want a better public transit system," one user commented.

"Fort Pitt tunnel will humble this car," said another.

Others offered a warm welcome: "Yinzers relax, Waymo is awesome!" a user commented.

In October, the U.S. Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched an investigation into Waymo after one of its robotaxis failed to stop for a school bus dropping kids off in Atlanta. Other issues have been reported in other cities.

"Major technical innovations always come with hiccups," said Scranton-based attorney Chris Munley in a statement. "With autonomous vehicles, these errors potentially come at the cost of a life. It's a relief none of these school bus incidents have killed or seriously injured a child."

Mr. Munley is a partner at Munley Law firm, "which has represented clients injured in ride-hailing cases," his statement said.

"The fact of the matter is that this technology is here to stay, and there will be glitches," he said. "Putting that technology behind the wheel will continue to put lives at risk until it's fully functioning as intended, and that won't be for a very long time."

Deep roots in autonomous driving

Pittsburgh is no stranger to autonomous driving.

Carnegie Mellon University tinkered with the future in the 1980s, setting the stage for driverless vehicles such as Waymo under the stewardship of professor William "Red" Whittaker. Mr. Whittaker led the early autonomous innovation with the outdoor mobile robot Terregator in 1983 and the Chevy-van-turned-computer Navlab in 1985.

In 2016, Uber rolled out the first free rides in self-driving Ford Fusions in Pittsburgh, the first city to test the autonomous vehicles. And Waymo itself has had Pittsburgh natives at its helm for quite some time.

Waymo, founded in 2009 and originally named the Google Self-Driving Car Project, is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company. It was renamed Waymo in 2016.

Chris Urmson, the co-founder and CEO of self-driving freight truck company Aurora, based in the Strip District, was a leader in what became Waymo. His research and success in autonomous driving at CMU got the attention of Google, and Mr. Urmson led the Google Self-Driving Car Project for eight years before leaving in 2016. He co-founded Aurora in 2017.

Waymo and other innovators in autonomous driving often cite safety as a core mission. They hope to reduce the more than 39,000 deaths by traffic accidents every year in the U.S.

In 2024, Pittsburgh joined a national effort to eliminate fatalities when then-Mayor Ed Gainey announced a commitment to Vision Zero, "a pledge to reduce traffic fatalities and serious injuries for all who use city streets to zero."

"Pittsburgh is an important ride-hailing market with ambitious Vision Zero goals and residents who will benefit from an additional safe, private and accessible transportation option," Waymo's Mr. Teicher said. " Pittsburgh is also home to several members of our team and has a special place in autonomous vehicle history."

© 2026 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Visit www.post-gazette.com.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.