Driverless cars are no longer just a futuristic concept in Miami-Dade, with Waymo officially launching its autonomous vehicle service to a selection of users from a 10,000-person waitlist. As of yesterday, those selected individuals can book rides through the Waymo app, experiencing the company's electric vehicles navigate Miami’s streets without a human at the wheel. According to a ride-along report by CBS News Miami, the autonomous vehicles have undergone a year of meticulous training to handle South Florida's diverse and challenging environment, including heavy rain.
Despite video evidence of Waymo vehicles pausing or hesitating at tricky intersections, Franklin Trujillo, Waymo's director of commercialization programs, assured that safety remains the core focus. "We don't want these types of events to happen, but we take them very seriously. The best part about it is that software is constantly evolving. We can deploy improvements to the fleet, and this continuous learning is crucial," Trujillo told CBS News Miami. Currently, Waymo's service area encompasses neighborhoods like Downtown Miami, the Design District, and South Miami, with plans for expansion throughout 2026.
Waymo's entry into Miami marks the sixth city where the public can now catch a ride in one of their fully autonomous vehicles. The service area covers 60 square miles and, similar to other rideshare apps, customers can hail a ride and add destinations via the Waymo app. When selecting a car, passenger door handles will pop out as a signal that it's unlocked and ready – described in a report by NBC6 Miami. However, for those looking to venture beyond the service area, Trujillo notes, "If you are looking for a destination outside of the current service area, it will give you an error that says we don’t yet service that area, so you can’t yet set it up to get stuck outside of that area."
Equipped with cutting-edge technology, each Waymo vehicle boasts 29 cameras, six radars, and five lidars. These features allow the cars to detect and navigate around unexpected obstacles, like wrong-way drivers. "So this car is going the wrong way, and so Waymo saw it and did a veer around it," explained Mark, a Waymo representative, as recounted by NBC6 Miami. Mark also highlighted Waymo's impressive safety milestones: "We’ve done over 127 million fully autonomous miles. And in those miles we have seen 10x fewer serious injury crashes, 5x fewer injury crashes, 5x fewer crashes with airbags, and 5x fewer injuries with pedestrians.”
