Waymo: its cars in Phoenix and SF had 48% fewer crashes/mile than humans and 73% fewer injury-causing ones; humans rear-ended Waymos in 16 of the 23 worst ones
Waymo's Phoenix and San Francisco operations had already moved toward fully autonomous service through its earlier plan to run driverless rides in San Francisco and expansion in Arizona. This comparison adds a city-level safety datapoint to that operating arc.
The result also sits between Waymo's earlier 7.14 million-mile safety analysis and later coverage of a much larger driverless-mile dataset, making the quality and comparability of the underlying evidence central to the robotaxi case.
First-order effects
Waymo gains a concrete safety benchmark for its two active markets: lower crash and injury-crash rates per mile than the human baseline cited in the analysis.
The finding shifts attention to the interaction between autonomous vehicles and surrounding human traffic, since human drivers rear-ended Waymo vehicles in most of the most severe incidents described.
Second-order effects
Competing autonomous-vehicle operators face greater pressure to publish comparable, exposure-adjusted crash data rather than rely on raw incident counts.
Insurers, city officials, and prospective fleet partners have a clearer basis to scrutinize both vehicle-at-fault outcomes and the costs of collisions caused by other road users; later Waymo-Swiss Re claims data points to that insurance-facing validation path.
Third-order effects
If comparable results persist across more cities and miles, robotaxi deployment decisions may increasingly turn on auditable safety performance rather than demonstrations alone.
The durable challenge is operational assurance: standardized reporting will matter because aggregate safety advantages do not eliminate high-profile incidents or clarify responsibility in mixed human-autonomous traffic.
The trend: Robotaxis are moving from a technical-validation narrative toward an evidence-and-assurance contest over real-world safety at operational scale.
It's not just that driverless Waymo vehicles get into far fewer serious crashes than human-driven ones. The crashes that do happen are overwhelmingly the fault of the other driver. Lots of human drivers rear-ending Waymos and running red lights. https://www.understandingai.org/ .…
Transparency and accountability are key to Waymo's mission to be the world's most trusted driver. Today, we're sharing a resource that shows how the Waymo Driver is making roads safer, backed by our driving data. Learn more: https://waymo.com/... [image]
I'm happy to see @Waymo open-source our miles driven and crash data (with severity) compared to human benchmarks. AFAIK we're the only company that has done this. We also commit to regularly update this site. Of course, the numbers are impressive too! https://waymo.com/... [image…
When we teach slow diffusion of invention, regulatory barriers entrenching existing tech plays a big role. I find it amazing that we have effectively solved car crashes (1.2m deaths per year!) and cities aren't scrambling to replace taxis. Waymo causes ~ zero serious injuries!
Young men doing stupid things is the biggest single cause of serious car crashes. If all we did was get more of them into driverless cars on Friday and Saturday nights it would make a huge difference in our fatality and injury numbers.
Good analysis of the safety record of Waymo driverless vehicles (spoiler: they're way safer than human-driven cars and most of the accidents they are involved in are caused by human drivers).
This is quality journalism about data. Clear, direct about what is being said, cites sources, and more than that gives explanations of why the writer believes what they have written. Recommended. May make you unhappy about everything else you read from a journalist this week.
Given that cities will need to claw for every advantage to thrive in the remote work era, Minneapolis and Saint Paul should find a way to roll out the red carpet for Waymo, becoming the first Midwest cities to have this service.
I'm wary of overconfident predictions and I'd like to see more data from third parties. But I'm ~99% confident that driverless vehicles will substantially reduce auto accidents. https://www.understandingai.org/ ...
This is a fantastic piece on Waymo's driving record. My favorite part is the concluding section, with a bunch of nitpicks of Waymo's statistics, the kind of close reading that not many journalists bother with. Tim did the work here and Waymo comes out looking very very good.
Driverless Waymo vehicles get into far fewer serious crashes than human-driven ones. The crashes that do happen are overwhelmingly the fault of the other driver.
Driverless Waymo vehicles get into far fewer serious crashes than human-driven ones. The crashes that do happen are overwhelmingly the fault of the other driver.