Waymo‘s fleet of self-driving cars is now operating in more US cities, and a study shows that it can reduce the number of accidents on the roads. The study, conducted on a pro bono basis between Waymo and reinsurer Swiss Re, found that Waymo cars cause fewer insurance claims than those driven by humans.
Swiss Re analyzed liability claims resulting from collisions covering 25.3 million miles driven by Waymo’s autonomous cars. The study also compared Waymo’s liability claims to the baseline for human-driven vehicles based on data from more than 500,000 claims and more than 200 billion miles driven. The results showed that Waymo Driver “demonstrated better safety performance compared to human-driven vehicles.”
The study found that cars driven by Alphabet’s Waymo Driver resulted in an 88% reduction in property damage claims and a 92% reduction in bodily injury claims.
Swiss Re also invented a new metric to compare Waymo Driver only to new cars with advanced safety technologies such as driver assistance, automatic emergency braking, and blind spot warning systems, rather than the entirety of those 200 billion miles of driving. In this comparison, Waymo still came out ahead, reducing property damage claims by 86% and bodily injury claims by 90%.
Of course, there are two glaring problems. First, Waymo currently only operates in cities, which, yes, account for the bulk of accidents in the U.S., but rural areas account for a much higher number of accidents (especially fatal ones) in proportion to population. (The study, by the way, says that including data from suburban areas in the baseline actually lowers Waymo’s actual safety performance.) Secondly: Waymo has just been around for a short time. It’s very difficult to get an accurate assessment of a system when the period of real-world testing has been relatively short.
The numbers may look good for Waymo Driver in research, but they are not perfect by any means. Waymo issued its second recall of the summer when one of its robotaxis crashed into a street telephone pole at 8 mph in Phoenix. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched an investigation into Waymo and found 24 incidents involving accidents or traffic violations.
