Safety Record for Waymo’s Driverless Taxis May Be Better Than Yours

Waymo, the driverless taxi service, has created a new website that outlines the level of safety for the vehicles, and the news is quite good.

In Phoenix and San Francisco, Waymo’s primary markets (with small penetration in Austin and Los Angeles), the service has driven over 22 million miles as Rider Only (RO), or no human driver, and saw 84 percent fewer airbag deployment crashes, and 73 percent fewer injury-causing crashes than conventional flesh-and-blood drivers would likely have caused.

Waymo said that, “This analysis included all collisions, regardless of the party at fault and Waymo’s responsibility. Moreover, the question of fault in causing or contributing to a collision is a legal determination. That said, the recent study led by Swiss Re [an insurance company] showed that over 3.8 million miles, the Waymo Driver reduced the frequency of property damage insurance claims by 76 percent and completely eliminated bodily injury claims compared to human drivers.”

The website ARSTechnica did its own analysis of the data, which comes at an especially important moment due to Waymo’s substantial growth: “The new data comes at a critical time for Waymo, which is rapidly scaling up its robotaxi service. A year ago, Waymo was providing 10,000 rides per week. Last month, Waymo announced it was providing 100,000 rides per week. We can expect more growth in the coming months. So it really matters whether Waymo is making our roads safer or more dangerous. And all the evidence so far suggests that it’s making them safer.”

“In total,” ARSTechnia says, “Waymo has reported nearly 200 crashes through June 2024, which works out to about one crash every 100,000 miles. Waymo says 43 percent of crashes across San Francisco and Phoenix had a delta-V of less than 1 mph—in other words, they were very minor fender-benders.”

Waymo began as the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009, and in 2016, it was spun out from Google under the company Alphabet, which still owns it. The company, which has an all-electric fleet, is based in Mountain View, California.

That said, in May, the Washington Post reported that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched an investigation into potential flaws in Waymo vehicles, focusing on 31 incidents that included Waymo vehicles ramming into a closing gate, driving on the wrong side of the road, and at least 17 crashes or fires.

But “Most of these incidents are surprisingly minor, with no injuries and just minor property damage, plus a few violations of rules of the road,” said Forbes, although “Almost all the reports can be easily classed as things that should not happen.”