Could Torontonians soon ride self-driving taxis? That’s Waymo’s plan

Toronto could get new cars on the road whose drivers will never get frustrated by gridlock — because the cars would be driving themselves.

Autonomous taxi operator Waymo joined the city’s lobbyist registry last month, aiming for new regulations that would set the stage for Torontonians catching a ride with its self-driving cars.

The company is “engaging with officials across Canada to help explain [its] technology,” Waymo spokesperson Ethan Teicher told CBC Toronto in a statement, adding the company is advocating “for legal frameworks that would allow us to bring our fully autonomous ride-hailing service to Canada.”

Discussions haven’t started about Waymo operating in Toronto, city spokesperson Saira Virani said in an emailed statement earlier this month. The lobbyist registry also shows no communications between lobbyists and the city so far.

The Silicon Valley-based company owned by Alphabet, Google’s parent company, already operates its vehicles in places like the San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix and Los Angeles, with plans to add London, U.K., to its roster.

Though Waymo expanded "aggressively" in the U.S., it's surprising they're so quickly ready to move into a cold climate like Canada, according to Steven Waslander, director of the University of Toronto’s robotics and AI laboratory.

LISTEN | What the future of self-driving cars could look like in Canada:

He said operating Waymo cars in the Canadian winter won’t be as smooth of a ride as the warm, dry climates where Waymo first launched.

“They have to basically figure out all the things that go wrong in that environment,” he told CBC Toronto.

“It changes everyone's behaviour, right? People drive more slowly, more cautiously. They start slipping. They can get stuck in snow.”

Not city’s first experience with AVs 

Some Torontonians have already stumbled across automated vehicles (AVs) on the road.

After getting approval from the province, Magna International tested its self-driving delivery trucks in some Toronto neighbourhoods this past summer — without much success.

The cars were "incapable of making right turns at red lights,” would have "frequent, abrupt stops,” malfunctioning turn signals, and would even shut down to reboot in the middle of traffic, according to a letter city staff sent to the province in October.

In that letter, signed by acting general manager of transportation services, Ashley Curtis, the city recommended limiting new AV pilots for any operator until they have “demonstrated their ability to obey all basic rules of the road.”

In the city's statement to CBC Toronto, Virani said, “each AV system operates differently and must be assessed individually.”

Still, Waymo is not immune to problems. The company issued a recall earlier this month over its cars driving past stopped school buses. Media reports also show a Waymo car previously drove through a police standoff in Los Angeles, while another ran over a beloved neighbourhood cat in San Francisco.

Waymo experiences 12 times fewer injury crashes involving pedestrians than human drivers, the company’s chief safety officer, Mauricio Peña, said in a statement, adding the company addressed the issue behind the recent recall and will continue analyzing the vehicle’s performance.

Even if Waymo's lobbying is unsuccessful, Waslander says the rise of autonomous vehicles isn’t far away. But how well that goes depends on the execution.

“As long as we maintain public access to how [the vehicles are] performing, I think we'll see that people will adopt it quite quickly,” he said.