Self-driving car giant Waymo announced Thursday that its vehicles are returning to Boston for further testing.
A subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet, Waymo says it’s laying “the groundwork” for full-scale deployment of its autonomous ride-hailing service in the Bay State by continuing to acquaint their vehicles with “Boston’s cobblestones, narrow alleyways, roundabouts and turnpikes.” The cars coming to Boston for testing will be driven manually by “trained specialists.”
For now, however, legal and political obstacles, not engineering ones, seem to stand most prominently in the company’s way.
Two identical bills winding their way through the state legislature would prevent self-driving cars from ferrying people or goods without the presence of a “human safety operator” in the vehicle capable of intervening in a moment of crisis. (Waymo’s robotaxis, where they roam freely, operate with no human chaperones.)
Some labor groups and Boston city councilors have expressed rigid resistance to the deployment of autonomous taxis on city streets, citing concerns about worsening traffic and road safety, and the displacement of human ride-share drivers.
Some experts have also questioned the ability of autonomous cars to ably navigate harsh winter environments, noting that snow and slush can muddle a car’s sensors and obscure its cameras.
Skeptics of self-driving cars tend to point to their blunders, such as colliding with emergency vehicles and driving around stopped school buses. (Human drivers, of course, regularly break rules of the road and run into objects.)
Waymo has long maintained that its driverless cars are safer than those with humans behind the wheel. The company claimed in a Thursday press release that its vehicles “are involved in 10x fewer serious injury or worse crashes, and 12x fewer injury crashes involving pedestrians compared to drivers where we operate.”
Waymo, cognizant of New England winter weather concerns, says it’s up for the challenge, equipping its cars with camera-wipers and “heating elements” to keep sensors unimpeded.
The company also says it’s “validating [its] latest generation technology across some of the snowiest cities in the country to support fully autonomous operations in winter weather.”
Meanwhile, Waymo’s Boston campaign has earned the backing of some disability rights advocates.
“For those of us who are blind or low-vision, transportation is consistently one of the biggest barriers to being part of the greater Boston community,” David Kingsbury, President of Bay State Council of the Blind, said in a statement circulated by Waymo. “The arrival of Waymo promises safer, more accessible transportation that will not discriminate, and will offer greater independence and greater convenience to thousands of Bostonians.”
The company’s cars (also driver-controlled) milled about Boston for a couple of months last year, mapping out the city’s often confounding streets.
You can currently hail a self-driving Waymo taxi in Atlanta, Austin, LA, Phoenix, San Francisco, and Miami, according to the company’s website. Boston is among the roughly dozen cities the company considers to be “up next.”
In July, the issue of self-driving cars in Boston came to a head at a hearing at City Hall. Representing Mayor Michelle Wu’s position, then chief of streets Jascha Franklin-Hodge said the city was studying the experiences of other cities, and that testing, learning, and regulating were needed in Boston “rather than simply opening the doors.”
Mayor Michelle Wu’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday about Waymo’s decision to return to Boston.
Waymo has openly urged Massachusetts political leaders to clear a legal path for autonomous vehicles to hit the streets.
Some state legislators seem to have heeded the call. Two identical bills filed on Jan. 17, 2025 — one in the House, one in the Senate — would allow people and companies to operate fully autonomous vehicles without a human at the wheel. The bills explicitly permit the creation of an “on-demand autonomous vehicle network” in the Commonwealth.
The bills would also bar state agencies and localities from banning the operation of autonomous vehicles.
A Waymo spokesperson would not say whether the company has thrown its weight behind any specific legislative efforts in Massachusetts.
Jaime Moore-Carrillo can be reached at jaime.moore-carrillo@globe.com.