Robotaxis Come to Chicago — And the Law Hasn’t Caught Up

What Illinois drivers, riders, and pedestrians should know about Waymo’s arrival.

If you have been downtown lately, you may have noticed something unusual parked along North Wells or rolling through the Loop: a white Jaguar SUV with a spinning sensor on the roof and the word Waymo on the door. Google’s self-driving car company has started mapping and testing its vehicles on Chicago streets. For now, there is still a human behind the wheel, but the company’s goal is clear. It wants to run fully driverless taxis here, the same way it already does in Phoenix, San Francisco, Austin, and a handful of other warm-weather cities.

Whether that actually happens depends on Springfield, and on a conversation that is only just getting started.

What is on the table in Springfield

In January, Rep. Kam Buckner of Chicago introduced the Autonomous Vehicle Pilot Project Act. The bill would let driverless commercial vehicles operate in Illinois counties with more than a million residents, along with Sangamon, Madison, St. Clair, and Monroe counties. In practice, Cook is the only Illinois county that currently clears the one-million threshold, so the bill would start there and extend to those few downstate jurisdictions.

The bill has not moved. It is sitting in the Rules Committee, which is about as early as a bill can be, and a second AV bill from Rep. Brad Stephens of Rosemont is in a similar holding pattern. Stephens, who is also the mayor of Rosemont and a supporter of the technology, has already conceded that passage this session will be “challenging.” Buckner says he is “still in the negotiation phase” with labor groups and other stakeholders.

What does this mean? Driverless Waymos are not going to be picking up fares on Michigan Avenue anytime soon. But the companies behind them are not waiting either. They are on the ground, mapping, lobbying, and building the case for when the politics catch up.

The safety questions nobody has answered

Waymo likes to point out that its vehicles are involved in far fewer serious-injury crashes than the average human driver in the same city. The company cites a 92% reduction. That number deserves to be taken seriously. It also deserves scrutiny.

Waymo is currently the subject of multiple federal investigations. Its cars have been cited for illegally passing stopped school buses, blocking emergency vehicles, and, in one case, striking a child near an elementary school. The company’s own spokesperson acknowledges that “rare incidents will occur” across the four million miles the fleet drives each week. When those incidents happen to your family, the word “rare” is cold comfort.

There is also the Illinois problem. Every city where Waymo operates today is a warm-weather city. Chicago is not. Our winters bring black ice, lake-effect snow, salt spray on camera lenses, and lane markings that disappear under slush for weeks at a time. Waymo says it has tested in Detroit, Buffalo, and New York. That is a start. It is not the same as a February on the Dan Ryan.

P.S. Sriraj, who runs the Urban Transportation Center at UIC, put it plainly: if the infrastructure is not there to support the technology — if there is no clear lane marking on a rural road, for example — the technology has a problem. And the driver, if anyone can still be called that, has a problem too.

The insurance gap

This is the piece that worries us the most, and the piece that gets the least attention in the news coverage.

Tim Cavanagh, president of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association, has pointed out that the current bill only requires AV operators to carry the state minimum in liability coverage. That is the same floor that applies to an individual driver in a 15-year-old sedan. Waymo is a subsidiary of Alphabet, one of the most valuable companies in the world. Asking a trillion-dollar parent company to carry the same insurance as a part-time rideshare driver is not a serious policy, it is a gift.

If a driverless car hits a pedestrian in a crosswalk, runs a red light into a family’s minivan, or sideswipes a motorcycle on Lake Shore Drive, the injured person should not have to chase a corporation through years of litigation to recover medical bills and lost wages. The coverage requirements need to match the size of the companies rolling these cars out, and they need to be written into the law before the cars are, not after.

What we are watching

There is a reasonable version of this technology. It could open up rides for people in neighborhoods underserved by rideshare. It could give seniors and people with disabilities a way to move around the state that they do not have today. Nobody at this firm is against progress.

But progress without guardrails is just risk transferred from the company to the public. As the bill works its way through committee, we will be watching for three things: meaningful insurance minimums that reflect who is actually behind these cars, real winter-weather performance data that is made public, and a clear process for the people who get hurt to be made whole quickly.

We will keep you posted as the legislation moves. If you or someone you know has been involved in a crash involving an autonomous or semi-autonomous vehicle anywhere in Illinois, please call our Waymo accident attorneys. These cases are new, the rules are being written in real time, and having a lawyer who is paying attention from day one makes a difference.

Questions about a potential case? Call Briskman Briskman & Greenberg at (312) 222-0010 or visit briskmanandbriskman.com. Consultations are free.