For fifteen years, the self-driving car was a postponed promise. It has become an ordinary service: Waymo delivered 15 million paid driverless rides in 2025 and targets one million per week by the end of 2026, Baidu Apollo Go has passed 22 million cumulative rides across 27 cities, and Aurora has been running the first commercial driverless trucks in Texas since April 2025. Peer-reviewed studies now measure the safety gain. Europe is entering its pilot phase, and Belgium opened its first autonomous shuttle line in mixed traffic in Leuven. Here is where autonomous driving stands, and what it already changes for business, seen from Belgium.
The shift played out in the United States. In spring 2025, Waymo (an Alphabet subsidiary) began serving more than one million fully autonomous rides per month; the company closed the year at 15 million paid rides, three times more than in 2024, and more than 20 million since launch. By early 2026, the service exceeds 500,000 rides per week across some ten US metros, ten times more than in May 2024; Las Vegas opened driverless in July 2026, Denver, San Diego and Tampa are announced, and groundwork is under way in more than 20 additional cities, including London and Tokyo. The stated goal: one million weekly rides by the end of 2026, with service extended to freeways and airports.
Safety is no longer a marketing claim but a published body of evidence. Waymo's study accepted in the peer-reviewed journal Traffic Injury Prevention compares, over 56.7 million driverless miles (more than 91 million km), the crash rates of its fleet with local human benchmarks: 92% fewer crashes with serious injuries or worse (0.02 versus 0.22 per million miles), 83% fewer airbag deployments, 92% fewer pedestrian injury crashes and 85% fewer involving cyclists. The company's safety hub, updated as the miles accumulate, confirms roughly a 10-fold reduction in serious crashes.
China is scaling at the same pace. Apollo Go, Baidu's service, delivered 3.2 million fully driverless rides in the first quarter of 2026 (+120% year on year), has passed 22 million cumulative rides and covers 27 cities, from Wuhan to Dubai and Abu Dhabi; in June 2026 it obtained a Level 4 permit in Switzerland under the AmiGo brand, a first in continental Europe. On the freight side, Aurora launched the first commercial driverless trucking service between Dallas and Houston in April 2025; by February 2026, the company counted 250,000 driverless miles, zero collisions attributed to its system, ten routes including a 1,000-mile corridor between Fort Worth and Phoenix that extends beyond legal human driving-time limits, and commercial capacity fully committed through the third quarter of 2026.
Belgium entered the race through public transport. Since 22 January 2026, De Lijn's line 16 has connected Leuven station to Heverlee with eight-seat WeRide autonomous shuttles: Belgium's first commercial deployment of autonomous vehicles in mixed traffic, on a 4 km loop, with a safety operator on board and digital ticketing. The pilot, run with the City of Leuven, serves as a living lab until 2027. The European framework exists: Implementing Regulation (EU) 2022/1426 defines type-approval for fully automated vehicles, an international first, and 2026 sees robotaxi trials starting in London (Uber and Wayve) and Berlin. The national link remains: traffic rules, licences and liability are still a matter for each member state.
McKinsey estimates that autonomous driving could generate $300 to 400 billion in revenue by 2035. The impact is not limited to carmakers: carriers, shippers, insurers, property players and employers will see their costs, contracts and jobs evolve.
Three things have changed. The safety evidence: tens of millions of driverless miles documented in peer-reviewed journals, where the sector used to produce only demonstrations. The economics: autonomous trucks work beyond human driving-time limits, Aurora announces next-generation hardware at half the cost, and robotaxis are extending to freeways and airports. The framework: European type-approval for driverless vehicles exists (Regulation 2022/1426), the United Kingdom passed its Automated Vehicles Act in 2024, and the first continental permits are landing, from Switzerland to Flanders. Caution remains warranted: General Motors stopped funding its Cruise robotaxi service at the end of 2024, a reminder that large-scale operations are a demanding trade, where trust is earned mile by mile.
An autonomous vehicle only operates within its operational design domain (ODD): mapped areas, validated weather conditions, defined road types. Services rely on remote assistance for ambiguous situations, and the costs of sensors, validation and operations remain high. European public acceptance is mixed, and in Belgium operating without a safety operator on board is not yet allowed. Finally, the social impact on driving jobs must be anticipated, not endured: reskilling, and roles evolving towards supervision and maintenance.
Transport flows, costs per corridor, business travel, site connections: where would autonomous driving change your costs or your service? This quantification frames what follows.
Regulation (EU) 2022/1426, national permits, regional pilots such as Leuven's line 16: identify what is already allowed, where, and under which conditions.
A logistics corridor with a partner, a site or campus shuttle, robotaxis for team travel in covered cities: one pilot, before/after indicators.
Liability, fleet insurance, supplier clauses, ownership of driving data and GDPR compliance: bring the legal side up to the level of the technology.
Within the perimeters where they operate, the published data points that way. Waymo's study accepted in Traffic Injury Prevention compares 56.7 million driverless miles with local human benchmarks: 92% fewer crashes with serious injuries or worse (0.02 versus 0.22 per million miles), 83% fewer airbag deployments, 92% fewer pedestrian injury crashes. These results hold for mapped, validated areas, not for every road or every condition.
In the United States, Waymo serves more than 500,000 paid rides per week across some ten metros (Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, Atlanta, Miami...), opened Las Vegas in July 2026 and is preparing Denver, San Diego and Tampa. In China and the Middle East, Apollo Go (Baidu) covers 27 cities, including Wuhan, Dubai and Abu Dhabi. In Europe, 2026 is the year of pilots: robotaxi trials in London (Uber and Wayve) and Berlin, a Level 4 permit in Switzerland for Apollo Go under the AmiGo brand, and De Lijn's autonomous shuttles in Leuven.
Belgium's first commercial deployment of autonomous vehicles in mixed traffic has been running in Leuven since 22 January 2026: De Lijn's line 16, operated with eight-seat WeRide shuttles on a 4 km loop between Leuven station and Heverlee, with a safety operator on board and digital ticketing. The pilot, run with the City of Leuven, serves as a living lab until 2027 to prepare wider deployments.
The autonomous truck runs beyond legal human driving-time limits. Aurora, the first commercial driverless service launched in April 2025 between Dallas and Houston, operates ten routes including a 1,000-mile corridor between Fort Worth and Phoenix, nearly halves transit times on that kind of lane, has logged 250,000 miles with no collision attributed to its system and targets more than 200 trucks by the end of 2026. For shippers, this means new cost-versus-time trade-offs on covered corridors.
Molderez Consult helps Belgian companies map their exposure to autonomous driving, track the European and Belgian regulatory framework, set up a measurable pilot (logistics, shuttle, team mobility) and adapt contracts, insurance and data.
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