Photo by Steve Juretson via Flickr
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Miami traffic is already a nightmare laden with horrific drivers and poor infrastructure to boot.
Will adding fleets of self-driving vehicles alleviate or exacerbate the traffic hellscape?
The city may be on the cusp of finding out, as autonomous-vehicle companies expand their presence in South Florida.
Amazon-owned Zoox announced on Wednesday, June 5, that it will soon deploy its retrofitted Toyota Highlander test fleet in Miami in hopes of launching a robotaxi service.
“We’re laying the foundations for our autonomous ride-hailing service in new cities across the U.S.,” Ron Thaniel, Zoox’s senior director of policy and regulatory affairs, said in a statement. “Austin and Miami offer key learning opportunities that will support the continued growth and refinement of our testing and service.”
Zoox, which has already deployed testing vehicles in San Francisco, Foster City, Las Vegas, and Seattle in preparation for a commercial launch, said its test fleet equipped with safety drivers will operate in small areas near the business and entertainment districts of Miami. The company is not yet offering public rides in the Magic City.
The announcement comes as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigates Zoox’s automated driving system over reports that two of the company’s Toyota Highlander SUVs braked suddenly and caused two rear-end collisions in separate incidents.
“Transparency and collaboration with regulators is of the utmost importance, and we remain committed to working closely with NHTSA to answer their questions,” Zoox said in a media statement.
According to Zoox, Miami presents opportunities to help the company refine its autonomous driving and study certain traffic infrastructure setups, including traffic lights suspended diagonally across intersections. Zoox says it will start within a focused testing area before “expanding methodologically as its artificial intelligence (AI) gets more familiar with the unique conditions” of the city.
Other self-driving technology companies, such as Waymo (owned by Google’s parent Alphabet Inc.) and General Motors subsidiary Cruise, have tested their autonomous vehicles in Miami. Both companies are also facing federal probes over self-driving vehicle safety concerns after a string of crashes.
Waymo, which already runs robotaxis in San Francisco and Phoenix, recently launched service in Los Angeles.
Cruise has relaunched its self-driving taxi service after suspending operations late last year following a crash in which one of its vehicles dragged a San Francisco pedestrian along the street after the person was hit by another vehicle.
The companies have maintained their robotaxis are less hazardous than human-driven cars. Zoox claims, “Our vehicles will be meaningfully safer than their human-driven counterparts.”
