Residents will be able to hail a driverless robo-taxi when Waymo begins its service in Central Florida next year, adding The City Beautiful to the handful of regions in the nation where the self-driving vehicle subsidiary of Google operates.
Waymo is just one of many autonomous vehicle, or AV, options Central Florida residents soon will have the chance to choose. Advocates and local officials say these vehicles are the inevitable future of transportation, helping to decrease congestion and reduce accident rates.
Others are more cautious — and some are downright skeptical. Incidents across the country have ignited conversations about AV safety and prompted legislation to regulate how the vehicles can operate. Opponents, led by labor unions worried in part about the loss of drivers’ jobs, are trying to slow the AV roll in battlegrounds like San Diego and Boston. But in Florida, legislators have already paved the way for an AV-friendly state.
“We’re thrilled that Waymo plans to bring its fully autonomous ride-hailing service to Orlando, and to the tens of millions of visitors we host each year,” Mayor Buddy Dyer said in a press release. “Waymo will be another exciting transportation option for the region that will enhance the investments we are already making in reducing congestion and increasing road and pedestrian safety. I plan to be one of the very first Waymo riders in Orlando.”
Waymo will begin operating its AVs with employees only at first before opening to the general public next year simultaneously across five cities: Miami, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando. The self-driving Jaguar SUVs, which use artificial intelligence to navigate and can be summoned via smartphone app, already run in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin, and Atlanta. The company said its vehicles in those five cities cause 11 times fewer serious injury collisions compared to human drivers.
Waymo offered no details about the size or precise start date of its Central Florida fleet.
At last month’s Florida Automated Vehicle Summit dozens of driverless bus, train and car companies displayed their AV wares, most of which use artificial intelligence and electric propulsion. Many said they are hoping to bring these projects to Central Florida in the near future.
“Florida will be a leader in this technology and we’ll have multiple companies deployed here,” said Jeff Brandes, founder of the summit and a former Republican state senator, representing Pinellas County from 2010 to 2022. “It doesn’t snow here, you don’t have to worry about the challenges of ice …and Orlando is where everyone around the world comes.”
Brandes said AVs will allow for “radically more efficient transportation” and make roads safer. The technology behind AVs doesn’t get distracted or tired and gives people time to do more than drive, he said. He believes car design will be adjusted to accommodate this.
“We need to rethink not only what these vehicles do but what they look like inside because if I’m not driving, I need to be entertained,” Brandes said. “Can I watch a movie? Can I take a video call? Can I work?”
Some of the technology on display at the summit is already being used locally.
The Osceola School District is the first in the nation to equip some of its school bus fleet with artificial intelligence that can detect and warn drivers about the whereabouts of children, although bus drivers remain in place.
The school district paid $7,000 per bus to equip ten of their fleet of over 300 with the technology, called Smart Radar System, and plans to expand it in the future, said Randy Wheeler, the school district’s transportation director. The system works by detecting heart rates as it scans the vehicle’s surroundings, and notifying the driver of hazards close to the bus, or under it. The system also scans inside the bus at the end of the day, ensuring no child is left inside after the last stop.
“We make bus stops at apartment complexes quite a bit and there could be 60 or so students getting on so the area becomes very hectic,” Wheeler said. “It’s hard for the driver to maintain situational awareness.”
BEEP, the autonomous bus that currently runs in Orlando’s Lake Nona region, is working on expanding, said Mark Reid, the company’s senior vice president of public affairs. In Orlando, the bus now runs faster, up from 12 miles per hour to over 35. Over the summer the company launched one of the nation’s first fully autonomous mass-transit systems in Jacksonville. The fleet carries passengers along a 3.5-mile loop with 12 stops in downtown Jacksonville.
But some are looking to put the brakes on AVs.
In San Francisco the community rallied against Waymo after a vehicle killed a beloved neighborhood cat named KitKat in October and again just a few weeks later when a driverless taxi hit a small dog. The incident drew national attention and led city officials to push for legislation that restricts AVs.
In Boston, the city council is mulling regulating AVs after a labor group, Labor United Against Waymo, held a rally in October arguing the company is threatening the job security of professional drivers like those who work for Uber and Lyft. The group is asking the city to study the impact of AVs before it allows them.
And in Texas, officials have said Waymo vehicles illegally passed school buses at least 19 times since the start of the school year. Waymo said Friday it would issue a recall updating software to handle the problem. Teamsters, one of the nation’s largest unions representing over 1 million workers across various industries, is backing legislation in California, Colorado, Massachusetts and New Jersey to put limits on AVs.
Aaron Isaacs is a sanitation truck driver in San Francisco who is part of the union working to halt Waymo and other AVs. He’s concerned AVs threaten his 30-year career. But mostly, he said, he’s worried about safety, arguing the incidents where Waymos hit pets should not be minimized.
“The computer can’t anticipate what a driver next to me will do but I can,” Isaacs said. “People say oh it’s just a cat or it’s just a dog but life is life. Life is special.”
In New Jersey a bill filed last week would force AVs to operate with a driver still sitting behind the wheel, ready to take over. Critics say the bill threatens the economic viability of the technology while supporters say it’s critical for safety.
But in Florida, a 2019 law does the opposite of the New Jersey bill. AVs on Florida roads are not required to have a human inside and local governments may not implement any tax, fee, or restriction on these vehicles.
Jeremiah Jaspon , a car accident lawyer based in Orlando, said while he hasn’t yet had an AV-related case he anticipates the calls to begin rolling in soon.
“Eventually it will probably be less and less accidents caused by humans,” Jaspon said. “I’m sure down the road there’ll be a lot of litigation geared towards the companies, the manufacturers of those automobiles.”
Currently, vehicle accident cases are litigated over who was at fault, but AV cases will have to prove the technology is at fault, which can get expensive, he said.
“It becomes more intricate because now you have to bring in experts who can look at the technology and give opinions about how the faulty technology caused the crash,” Jaspon said. “It’s the computer who didn’t do what it was designed to do or wasn’t designed properly.”
And injured parties will have to make that argument against deep-pocketed tech companies, not errant vehicle owners.
“You’re going to be going against major corporations who have a vested interest in fighting tooth and nail,” Jaspon said. “But we’re heading towards computers taking over.”
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