In San Francisco today, any person can hail a ride that has no one behind the wheel.
If the ride is ordered through Waymo, one of the dominant autonomous-vehicle companies in the state, the company will send a white Jaguar that unlocks through an app and carries the passenger to their destination.
In Toronto, Waymo has spent months speaking with government officials about bringing its services north. The company, which is a subsidiary of tech giant Alphabet Inc., is registered to lobby federal officials and its representatives have met with city officials.
Yet Torontonians still cannot order a driverless ride. The same goes for the rest of Canada.
Ontario has gone the farthest of all the provinces. As of June 2025, the province had approved 15 organizations to test driverless vehicles on public roads under pilot permits. But that program expires in October 2027, and its future is uncertain.
Bryant Walker Smith, an associate professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law, says the technology comes with risks — but so do human drivers.
“I’m concerned about automated driving,” said Walker Smith, who studies automated vehicles.
“[But] I’m terrified about human driving. We should not forget in any of these discussions that people are dying on our roads every day.”
How America cleared the road
Waymo first began operating commercial, fully driverless rides in 2020, and today provides fully autonomous rides in 15 U.S. cities. This comes after expanding its services to Denver, San Diego, Tampa and Las Vegas this September.
The company is also currently preparing to launch its services in London, Munich and Singapore.
Jason Millar, a robotics researcher at the University of Ottawa, notes Waymo and other autonomous-vehicle companies, such as Zoox, launched first in California, both because of the mild climate and tech friendly culture.
“It made sense to start in California,” he said. “In the Bay Area … you just don’t get a bad day.”
In the United States, states regulate how cars can operate on public roads, while the federal government oversees the design and manufacture of new vehicles.
California requires autonomous-vehicle companies to obtain one permit to test driverless vehicles on public roads. It mandates a separate permit and passenger safety plan to carry passengers during those tests. And it requires a third deployment permit for companies to charge fares for their services.
Many other states that now allow driverless cars — including Texas, Florida and Arizona — have less stringent rules.
“When you started seeing [Waymo] expand into other jurisdictions … they tended to be Republican states where you have very permissive [regulatory] environments,” said Millar.
Walker Smith says the state-by-state system gave companies both permissive testing grounds and, in California, the credibility of formal government approval.
“That flexible regime, I think, has supported innovation in automation and innovation in regulation,” he said. “That has been valuable.”
Tests, but not taxis
In Canada, the regulation of autonomous vehicles could fall to federal, provincial and city authorities.
Currently, the rules lag the technology.
In 2025, Transport Canada published an updated automated vehicle safety framework. It has also issued national testing guidelines and participates in international work on vehicle standards.
But its Canadian Motor Vehicle Safety Standards were not designed specifically for driverless technology. And autonomous vehicles are not available for commercial sale, Transport Canada told Canadian Affairs in an email.
“Current use of automated driving system technology on public roads is limited to temporary pilot projects approved and administered by provincial and territorial governments,” the agency added.
Ontario’s pilot, running since 2016, allows testing if a passenger or remote operator can monitor the vehicle and stop it safely. It expires in October 2027, and the province has not said what comes next.
However, a May report from the City of Toronto said Ontario would approve driverless operators and decide where they can run. It noted that many traffic laws assume a human driver.
And that is not the only regulatory hurdle. Policymakers must also decide on issues such as liability for collisions, how vehicles interact with first responders, and whether services are accessible to passengers requiring assistance.
A driverless service might benefit some passengers with disabilities, says Millar. But they would also raise questions about how to assist people who need help boarding.
“You need … human touch to … help those people into the car,” he said.
The climate challenge
Walker Smith and Millar both noted that regulation may not be the principal reason Canadians cannot currently hail a driverless ride.
“I don’t know that the regulatory fragmentation … is the driving factor here,” said Millar.
“There’s no real business case for 365-day service in Canada because you’re going to run into problems with weather.”
Waymo has said that, as of June, its vehicles had travelled more than 270-million fully autonomous miles. Compared to a human benchmark, its cars have been in 82 per cent fewer injury-causing crashes, and 95 per cent fewer crashes causing serious injury or death, according to its analysis.
But autonomous vehicles do not have this same demonstrated safety record in winter conditions.
Snow can interfere with cameras and other sensors, obscure objects and render detailed maps less useful. A four-lane road may function as two lanes after a storm, with drivers following tracks in the snow rather than painted lines.
Vehicle traction can also be a concern in icy conditions.
Millar says the algorithms used to control a vehicle gripping dry pavement differ fundamentally from those needed once it begins to skid.
“There are multiple layers of technical difficulties that stack up to make it just a much more challenging technical problem to solve in Canada than it is in a dry, warm climate,” said Millar.
Waymo’s launch in Denver this September will begin to provide the company with performance data in snowy conditions. The company says its newest system is designed to serve places with harsher winters.
“That’s sort of the next iteration of expansion, and that’s going to be really informative for the conditions under which these vehicles operate,” said Walker Smith.
Walker Smith notes that a dependable taxi must operate throughout the year.
“If you can’t provide a taxi service or a personal vehicle service year-round, then you’re going to have a pretty small market share,” he said.
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