For many years, Waymo has relied on an established safety framework — a comprehensive set of methodologies that we use to assess the safety of our technology and operations and that guides the deployment of the Waymo Driver. Our robust safety framework has enabled us to launch the world’s first fully autonomous ride-hail service, Waymo One, and expand our 24/7 operations with no human driver across multiple major U.S. cities. Today, residents of Metro Phoenix and San Francisco rely on Waymo to commute, run errands, meet friends and get a safe ride home as part of their daily lives.

Waymo’s recent technology advancements and rapid expansion across Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles wouldn’t be possible without the underlying innovative research that helps drive our progress forward. As a pioneer in the AV industry, we have continuously contributed to the research community through publishing and expanding the Waymo Open Dataset — one of the largest and most diverse autonomous driving datasets ever released. Today, we are excited to announce the latest expansion of the dataset with even more sensor data and labels. We are also launching our new and exciting 2023 Waymo Open Dataset Challenges -- this is our 4th annual Challenge edition, and we invite all researchers to participate!

Waymo has teamed up with iHeartRadio to provide a new in-car audio experience for Waymo One trips in our Jaguar I-PACE vehicles. Our thousands of riders in San Francisco and Downtown Phoenix can now pick a vibe for their ride by simply selecting “Music” on the passenger screens.

Waymo has achieved many global industry firsts. Each time we delight our riders and deliver on our mission safely, we are proudest. In January, we accomplished another first: we exceeded one million miles on public roads with no human behind the wheel. To put this into perspective, this equates to 40 trips around the Earth, or over 80 years of driving for the average American. But this number is not a meaningful measure of progress, without context. What’s more important is our safety performance over the course of these one million rider-only miles that demonstrates the safety benefits of the Waymo Driver. We’re sharing this safety performance data today to both acknowledge this next step on our journey, and to encourage greater transparency across the industry.

Editor’s note: As a single dad in San Francisco, Erik needs a safe and reliable transportation method to get his kids around the city. Enter Waymo One. Since becoming a Trusted Tester over a year ago, Erik has taken over 450 rides with the Waymo Driver and has seen a marked improvement from then to now. Hear more from Erik about what’s gotten better and some of the interesting scenarios he’s encountered along the way, including details of his first rider-only trip.

Editor’s note: Maya isn’t just any Waymo One rider. In her 300+ rides with Waymo, she’s kept a detailed spreadsheet of every one so she can track changes and improvements to the service over time. Dozens of these rides have been rider-only trips, which we began offering to San Franciscans at the end of last year. Check out our Q&A with her below and this video to hear more from this seasoned Waymo One rider.

As travelers across the country prepare to fly home for the holidays, they’ll have a brand new transportation option when they land in Phoenix: a fully autonomous Waymo ride, with no one behind the wheel.