Digital Media Concepts/Waymo's impact on the economy

Waymo, is considered as a part of Alphabet, Google's parent company. The company is known for their "self-driving cars" and their headquarters is located in Mountain View, California. Their goal is to simply "make it safe and easy for people and things to move around." Waymo operates in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, AZ, and Austin, TX, which partners with Uber, and can only be accessed through the app. Waymo was Google's Self-driving car experiment that started in 2009. They came up with the idea of improving road safety and has done this by creating vehicles that don't require a person to operate them. The company operates 700 vehicles and reports has shown that there is 80% reduction in property damage claims.

The company has recorded an estimate of 2.3 million miles which most of it is from San Francisco, back in 2022. Autonomous vehicles (AVs)have shown many advantages in San Francisco. This includes affordable fares, more environmental consciousness, and lastly, a decrease in driving-related fatalities. AVs are proven to minimize crashes and lower human error. A case study from 2023 has shown that replacing 6.6% of cars with electric self-driving vehicles could help decrease air pollution by 40%. While Waymo's autonomous vehicles have advantages in San Fracisco's economy, there are also disadvantages that comes with it. They threaten gig workers which can cause the government's revenue to go down and disrupt the economy. Cruise, a similar company that also produces AVs had a situation when they started operating their vehicles in 2023. A pedestrian had been hit by a driver in a regular car and fell in front of a Cruise, slowed down and stopped before driving over the pedestrian causing the person to suffer from critical injuries. After this incident, the company had to recall all their vehicles to improve their safety measures and update their technology. This is another disadvantage of AVs. While other self-driving vehicles are deemed to be safe, the others can be the complete opposite.

For Americans, the use of driverless cars can have both positive and negative effects. 72% of people believe that older and disabled people can live independently and 56% find it less stressful. 83% of the people believes that those who drives and deliver items for a living in regular vehicles may lose their jobs or even deal with risks that is security-related because of computer systems being hacked with no difficulty. Those who are in favor of self-driving vehicles having benefits, such as younger people who are interested to this kind of technology, are most likely to see its positive outcomes, while the people who are against AVs are going to argue that the use self-driving cars would most likely cause an increase in income inequality. Majority of Americans don't feel comfortable being in a driverless car and sharing the road with one.

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1. ↑ "Autonomous Driving Technology - Learn more about us". Waymo. Retrieved 2025-04-05.
2. ↑ "Waymo - A Google X Moonshot". X. Retrieved 2025-04-05.
3. ↑ "Yes Way(mo) or No Way(mo)? How Autonomous Vehicles Impact San Francisco's Economy – Michigan Journal of Economics". 2024-11-27. Retrieved 2025-04-05.
4. ↑ Tyson, Lee Rainie, Cary Funk, Monica Anderson and Alec (2022-03-17). "4. Americans cautious about the deployment of driverless cars". Pew Research Center. Retrieved 2025-04-05.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)