Onondaga County legislators are introduced to Waymo's self-driving cars. Waymo's New York Policy Director Aimee Privitera talked to legislators in September about the possibility of bringing autonomous cars to Syracuse and Central New York.

If a Waymo vehicle were to come to Syracuse today, it could not operate without a human hand on the wheel at all times. But that could change soon — and if it does, the company already has made deep inroads in Central New York. 

Waymo operates a new kind of self-driving ride-share service, using cameras, radar, LiDAR to navigate without needing a driver. They buy existing vehicles and outfit them with their technology. Waymo recently told a Central Current reporter that its arrival was “inevitable.” 

As state officials consider passing legislation to make Waymo legal, the company has made inroads with local leaders. One of their biggest allies has been CenterState CEO, a Syracuse-based nonprofit with a multi-million dollar budget focused on creating economic growth. 

“We have a lot of natural connections to that industry, unmanned systems,” said Kevin Schwab, the vice president of strategy, policy and planning at CenterState CEO. 

He explained that Syracuse was making much of the technology used in Waymo: sensor systems, radar, LiDAR, cybersecurity, secure communications, and more. 

“It was really about the innovation in those particular industries that we really developed such an amazing concentration of here,” said Schwab. “We said, ‘This is a great example of kind of the technologies that are coming out of our region and how they’re being applied,’ and so that was the real connection that said, ‘Let’s talk to the folks at Waymo.’”

CenterState has lobbied senators and assembly members to pass legislation which would allow Waymo to operate in New York state. Waymo has hired an additional 11 lobbyist groups to make the same case, reaching nearly every sitting state representative in Central New York. 

A Waymo representative gave the keynote speech at a CenterState annual meeting. There is a conference room named for the company at the Inspyre hub. 

And Waymo itself has come to Central New York: the company brought a vehicle to the state fair. They brought another vehicle to wait outside the September session of the Onondaga County Legislature. 

They’ve worked with students at the STEAM school. Mayor Ben Walsh wrote a letter of support for Waymo, said Aimee Privitera, the New York policy manager for Waymo. Walsh did not respond to a text from a Central Current reporter requesting comment about the letter. She also said that Assemblyman Bill Magnarelli, who has served as the assembly transportation committee chair, had been approached by Waymo. He did not sponsor a bill but wanted to run a pilot program in Syracuse, Privitera said. Magnarelli, who in June lost a primary to Onondaga County Legislator Maurice “Mo” Brown, confirmed in a text he was interested in setting up a Waymo pilot program.

Waymo bills itself as safe, cheap, and useful. It self-reports that its cars steeply reduce the number of crashes when compared to human drivers on a mile-by-mile basis . The cost is slightly higher than Uber, but riders don’t have to tip the machine, said Privitera. It’s a tool that would mostly bridge the last mile of a trip, the company claims. 

“We get kind of clumped into negative tech when actually the whole thing is to save lives,” said Privitera. She said the company had to overcome a lot of misinformation.

Waymo purports to have 95% fewer “serious injury or worse” crashes than human drivers would over the same distance traveled. 

Those statistics come from peer-reviewed studies driven by scientists employed by the company, although the company uses and provides publicly available data so that it can be replicated. To measure both the human and autonomous-vehicle crashes for this data, the company requested police reports through public information requests and counted an injury if someone had been noted as having a serious or incapacitating injury or death from the crash. They calculated the rate of these incidents per million miles. 

The company calculates it has an 82% lower rate of injury causing crashes than a human. They used a similar methodology to calculate this, but included any report with a reported injury. They accounted for potential underreporting by humans using a 32% adjustment. They also claim to reduce crashes involving pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists by 94%, 86%, and 82%, respectively. 

A recent New Yorker piece includes several examples of Waymo mishaps that might not count as injury-causing crashes: the cars have driven over fireworks, driven into floodwaters and construction zones, and been attacked by men on the street. In any of these cases, the rider must rely on Waymo’s support agents — 70 of them, stationed around the world — as they cannot stop or move the cars themselves. 

In some of these cases, support agents responded by noting the “stressful experience” or telling passengers they’re safest if they stay in the car. Agents are trained not to apologize, as it could imply guilt, the New Yorker reported. 

Waymo has swept across the nation, now operating in cities in all four corners of the contiguous United States, as well as in London and Tokyo. Now, it sees upstate New York as a potential next move. 

But commercial self-driving cars are still illegal in New York State.

Last year, Assemblyman Al Stirpe was one of the cosponsors for the assembly bill which, if passed, could bring Waymo to New York. 

He said he did not imagine an opt-in option for each municipality: “That would be pretty hard to regulate anyways,” he said. He said he felt good about Waymo’s safety record, which would have to be better than the human record to pass. 

Assembly bill 4901A would legalize fully autonomous vehicles without human drivers, provided they meet certain stipulations:

  • Minimal safety risk in case of system failures
  • A capability to abide by traffic and motor vehicle safety laws
  • A law enforcement interaction plan detailing how to remove the vehicle from the road, how to recognize if it is in autonomous mode, and a means of coordinating with fleet support specialists

Related bills have come before the New York State Senate and Assembly several times since 2021. Each time, the bills have ended up in committee, never making it to the floor to be voted on. But with each time the bills have been proposed, additional cosponsors have signed on. The next time the legislature could review these bills will be in January 2027, when the next legislative session begins.

Stirpe was connected to Waymo through CenterState. He said that while numerous companies seem to be working to develop autonomous vehicle technology, his conversations with Waymo convinced him that it would be a safe option. 

Both Stirpe and Schwab pointed out that ten years ago, upstate New York was one of the last places in the country where someone could order a ride-share app. Those, too, had been illegal. If someone had gotten off the plane at the Syracuse airport, their Uber and Lyft apps would not have been able to call a car. 

“What kind of impression does that give you?” asked Schwab. “We have come a really, really long way in the last decade to where we are now — taking the incredible sorts of talents and businesses here, driving new investment here, and now on the front end of conversations about innovation and embracing new technology — where that wasn’t the case that long ago.” 

For Schwab, the fact that much of the technology that drives Waymo is developed in Syracuse is a key selling point for the company. For Stirpe, it is a bonus — but with Micron and high tech industries moving in, he does not want the impression that Central New York is behind the times, he said. 

Waymo has already spent extensive time in the region — it did its winter testing in Buffalo. The company has already mapped the streets of Syracuse. 

Tipperary Hill’s upside down stoplight gave Waymo cars a run for their money, said Privitera. But the machine learning picked it up. Now every Waymo in the country has to check to make sure the stoplight ahead is red on top, Privitera said.

“We know it’s the only one in the country,” said Privitera. “Still, that is a verification that we have to do because of Syracuse, which is fun.” 

Surrounded by cameras, Waymo adheres to privacy laws of the location it’s in, Privitera said. Data is only stored for the company’s own purposes: developing maps, she said. 

The company does share data with police, but they have to have a warrant, said Privitera. 

After saying this, she quickly redirected to talking about the potholes Waymo has helped to detect in cities — the company partners with Waze which then shares the data with the municipalities for free. Five-hundred potholes were patched up in Waymo’s first two weeks in their first market, she said. 

Privitera also pointed out the company’s connections with cycling, pedestrian, and disability groups. She said that an organization for the blind in Westchester County had told her they were disappointed the Waymo bill had not passed in the last legislative cycle; for many blind people, a Waymo ride could be the first time they had ever been in the car alone, she said. 


Waymo is not currently equipped for wheelchair users, although they can use the Waymo app to order wheelchair-accessible cars through other companies. 

Pamela Hunter, who represents the New York State Assembly’s 128th District, said that she would like to see broader discussions and a joint hearing with the assembly’s transportation, insurance, and consumer protection committees.

Some lawmakers view Waymo as a potential solution for Central New York’s complex transportation problems. 

“We have a real need as far as transportation options, and if this can add another transportation option, we have to at least explore it,” said Brown, the Democratic nominee for the 129th assembly district. Brown said that he was “skeptical” but ultimately believed he was in favor of the cars. “I am cautiously optimistic that this can be beneficial for Syracuse.” 

Transportation has been a major talking point in local government: The Onondaga County Legislature, of which Brown is currently a member, started a Housing and Transportation Citizen’s Advisory Board earlier this year. 

Transportation equity has also been a focal point in determining what bringing Micron to Central New York might look like, with the county planning to set up new bus routes to bring people to Clay. 

Brown’s main concern was Waymo’s connection to Google — the company was initially developed as part of a Google self-driving car project. Since then, it has spun off, though it still shares Google’s parent company, Alphabet. 

“Mega corporations do not have the best track record in small communities like ours,” said Brown. 

Brown also expressed a mixture of concern and amusement about a recent incident wherein Waymo called the police after detecting that passengers had guns. “Like, that’s a good thing. You don’t want people illegally doing stuff, but at the same time, that’s scary as hell,” he said. 

Ultimately, though, he said that he believed the data that showed Waymos are safer than other vehicles. He said he believed the big concerns in New York City did not apply to Syracuse. For example, he did not think human drivers were likely to notice a difference in the number of customers unless there was a fleet of at least 200 Waymos on the street. While there would be the same number of cars on the road, he believed that fewer human drivers would mean fewer accidents. 

Brown said he has scheduled a time to call Brian Cunningham, the assemblymember sponsoring the bill which could legalize Waymo, and he plans to solicit the public before voting. “I do think if we’re going to do it at all, we should do it right, and the only way to do it right is to do it together,” he said. “And we have not had that together conversation.”

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Laura Robertson is a staff reporter covering Onondaga County. Prior to joining Central Current, she lived on the edge of the Bering Strait in Nome, Alaska, where she worked as a reporter for a year. She...