From Governing.com: a study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety finds that Waymo’s autonomous driving record is better than the average human driver in multiple urban areas. “These results provide further evidence that Waymo’s deployments of L4 vehicles in driverless operation have lower crash rates than human drivers in comparable areas—68% lower in Waymo’s current state of technology and current locations.” From the Governing story:
- That rate varied by city: In Phoenix, Waymo had a 76 percent lower crash rate than human drivers; 71 percent lower in Los Angeles; 35 percent lower in San Francisco; and 3 percent higher in Austin. (Researchers caution that they had a small sample size for both Waymo and human drivers in Austin, which could have affected results).
- Waymo cars operating in driverless mode also got into fewer collisions severe enough to merit reporting to the police. From 2021-2024, Waymo driverless cars were involved in an average of 1.28 such crashes per million vehicle miles traveled, while human-driven cars were involved in 4.06.
- Compared to human-driven cars, Waymo cars were involved in 85 percent fewer single-vehicle crashes per vehicle miles traveled.
- Waymo cars were also involved in 81 percent fewer injury- or fatality-causing crashes per vehicle miles traveled, compared to human-driven cars.
It’s important to note that this data does not include interstate highway or freeway driving, so the results can’t necessarily be extrapolated to those venues.