{"id":199290,"date":"2025-09-04T10:24:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T10:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/199290\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T10:24:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T10:24:08","slug":"philadelphia-killed-hitchbot-its-take-on-waymo-tracks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/199290\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia killed HitchBOT. Its take on Waymo tracks."},"content":{"rendered":"

Autonomous vehicles rolled into Philly this summer, raising new questions about how robot taxis might share the city\u2019s streets.<\/p>\n

You may have seen Waymo vehicles<\/a> driving around Center City<\/a> for the last two months, clearly marked and topped with futuristic-looking sensors. These cars were being driven by people gathering data<\/a> about Philly\u2019s roads and the driving environment, with no guarantee that Waymo will launch a fleet of vehicles here.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cPhilly is crazy. Crazy things are going to happen to those cars.\u201d<\/p>\n

Suzanne Sheer, Philadelphia resident<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Already, though, there\u2019s a cultural hurdle. As resident Matt Dimarco put it, the biggest challenge for integrating Waymo into Philly would be getting Philadelphians to accept it as part of the city. After all, Philadelphians destroyed the HitchBOT<\/a>, a hitchhiking robot that successfully traversed other cities, in 2015.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Philadelphians also told Technical.ly they\u2019d rather give their money to a human gig worker over a robot \u2014 but they\u2019re still open to self-driving rideshare if the price is right.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo many people are employed by Uber and Lyft, and I know that it\u2019s really helpful for people to be able to choose their hours of working,\u201d Suzanne Sheer told Technical.ly at Love Park. \u201cAny robot taking over human jobs is freaky and scary.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Trust and jobs are top priorities<\/p>\n

While people like Sheer see the benefits of Waymo, such as preventing people from driving drunk or helping those who can\u2019t drive, rideshare services offer the same benefits.\u00a0<\/p>\n

People also tend to trust other people more than robots. Zhara Hunter finds the autonomous vehicles scary because you can\u2019t know what\u2019s going to go wrong with the technology, she said. She trusts human drivers more and would rather support their business.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Waymo Driver on a Jaguar (Courtesy)<\/a><\/p>\n

Waymo\u2019s selling point to some residents is its novelty. Multiple people we spoke to, including Mijuel Johnson, said they would ride in one for the experience, though not all the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would stick more so with the taxis, Ubers and Lyfts,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cI would focus more on making sure that those people still had their jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

In cities where Waymo already operates, residents report similar reactions. Ryan Tran was visiting Philly for a few days from Atlanta, one of the five cities where Waymo currently operates a fleet of vehicles.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He sees them all the time, but only personally knows one person who has ridden in one, Tran said. While he\u2019s generally pro autonomous vehicles, he doesn\u2019t like that they distract from public transportation or take business from Uber and Lyft drivers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Waymo did not respond to Technical.ly\u2019s request for comment about its tests in Philly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The cheapest option is still the first choice<\/p>\n

For many people, choosing which rideshare option they\u2019d prefer comes down to cost<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tran, the Atlanta resident, said the decision whether to ride in a Waymo would depend on how much it costs compared to the other rideshare options.<\/p>\n

Waymo\u2019s pricing depends on the location and distance of the ride, just like with Uber and Lyft, but a report from this summer found that Waymo rides were consistently more expensive<\/a> than the other rideshare services, despite lower labor costs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Self-driving cars also lack a personal touch. Dimarco said he wants to see their money going to real people, not just the company,\u00a0even if those rideshare companies have entered legal settlements in the past<\/a> for underpaying the gig workers.<\/p>\n

Uber and Lyft drivers are paid<\/a> with tips and a percentage of the ride fare, which varies depending on location, time of day and length of the ride. Both companies consider the drivers that use their platforms as independent contractors or self-employed workers who don\u2019t usually get benefits or a salary from the company.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Taxi drivers\u2019 earnings depend on the rules of the company<\/a> they work with. Some companies take a percentage of the fare drivers earn, while others lease the actual taxis to the drivers, impacting how much money the drivers get to keep.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Humans are dangerous, too<\/p>\n

Aside from how Waymo\u2019s vehicles may impact other rideshare drivers\u2019 businesses, Philadelphians also had concerns about the safety of the vehicles and how they would integrate into the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dimarco\u2019s main safety concern would be for pedestrians and cyclists on the road, as opposed to other cars. The rate of car crashes involving pedestrians or cyclists declined significantly during the pandemic, but has slowly been creeping up<\/a> over the last few years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure that the technology is there to relatively safely navigate the streets. Deep down inside, I don\u2019t see an increase in accidents,\u201d Dimarco said. \u201cI\u2019m sure that human error is as common as machine error.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waymo provides safety data<\/a> about its operations on its website, although Dimarco said he would probably trust the information more if it came from a third-party source instead.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During its first month in Atlanta, Waymo cars caused zero at-fault accidents<\/a>, mostly just sparking some confusion on the road. In other places, though, they\u2019ve been the target of vandalism, including instances in Los Angeles when the cars were set on fire<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI often describe people crossing the street like they want to fight the cars that are driving,\u201d Dimarco said. \u201cSo I\u2019m wondering if they\u2019ll be accepting of an autonomous vehicle.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In at least one neighborhood, however, Philadelphians have already accepted similar bots. The city already has an autonomous shuttle that runs in the Navy Yard, which debuted last winter<\/a>. The main difference is that the Navy Yard shuttle runs on a closed loop route and has an operator in case of emergencies.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Waymo vehicles would be running on any and all streets in the city, though, and the roads in certain neighborhoods can be confusing. It\u2019s easy for humans to make those mistakes, so it doesn\u2019t seem unlikely that Waymo could also cause an accident, according to Sheer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cPhilly is crazy,\u201d Sheer said. \u201cCrazy things are going to happen to those cars.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Autonomous vehicles rolled into Philly this summer, raising new questions about how robot taxis might share the city\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":199291,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,110434,1448,2830,1311,752,522,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-199290","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-autonomous-tech","10":"tag-pa","11":"tag-pennsylvania","12":"tag-philadelphia","13":"tag-robotics","14":"tag-transportation","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115145544010242015","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}