Overview
- Waymo told Sen. Ed Markey it runs four remote-assistance centers in Arizona, Michigan and two Philippine cities with about 70 agents on duty at a time, roughly half of them in the Philippines.
- The company says agents provide advice only when the automated driving system requests help, the vehicle retains decision authority and can reject suggestions, and staff do not passively monitor live feeds.
- Waymo reported median one-way latency of about 150 milliseconds from U.S. centers and 250 milliseconds from abroad, and said most ADS-initiated requests are resolved by the system before a human responds.
- A U.S.-based Event Response Team holds a tool that could prompt a stopped vehicle to move forward at 2 mph in rare scenarios, which Waymo says has never been used outside training.
- Waymo cited a TÜV SÜD audit aligning its program with AVSC best practices and shared high-level safety and scale metrics, while withholding certain operational data as proprietary as Sen. Markey and Rep. Buddy Carter seek further scrutiny.