California cleared the way for Waymo to deploy driverless vehicles in San Francisco and Los Angeles after they were suspended over a lawsuit.
The approval from the California Public Utilities Commission occurred on Friday, KRON4 reported. The self-driving car company sought to expand into the two major cities but was halted when San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu sued the commission over safety concerns in January. While CPUC said last week that the expansion was paused pending “further review,” it reversed its decision after Waymo provided an updated Passenger Safety Plan.
“These include education of passengers and the public, in-vehicle safety and accessibility features, vehicle identification features and pickup and drop-off protocols, protocols for responding to adverse events both within and outside the vehicle, and protocols for communicating with and supporting passengers,” the CPUC letter, seen by the outlet, read.
It ruled that the updated PSP met the “requirements of the Deployment Decision” and was “complete relative to the requirements described in the Deployment Decision and is reasonable for planned service.”
The company praised the decision in a statement to KRON4.
“We’re grateful to the CPUC for this vote of confidence in our operations, which paves the way for the deployment of our commercial Waymo One service in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Peninsula,” it said.
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“As always, we’ll take a careful and incremental approach to expansion by continuing to work closely with city officials, local communities and our partners to ensure we’re offering a service that’s safe, accessible and valuable to our riders,” it added. “We’re incredibly grateful for the riders and community partners who have supported our service to date — including +15,000 rides thus far in LA — and we’re looking forward to bringing the benefits of fully autonomous ride-hailing to more people.”
Chiu and other city officials sought to halt the expansion over safety concerns, with Chiu citing “hundreds of safety incidents, including interference with first responders.”
