Love them or hate them, robotaxis are sure to make headlines in 2024. And aside from the glamorous, sci-fi-inspired marketing surrounding Tesla's recently unveiled Cybercab robot taxi, safety has remained a recurring theme in one way or another.
Earlier this year, a survey found that the majority of the U.S. public (68%) expressed safety concerns when asked how they feel about deploying self-driving vehicles (SDVs) on public roads. Yet within that majority, more than half believe that SDV safety issues can be solved or that SDVs will actually be safer than humans.
It's no wonder that Alphabet-owned Waymo, which offers the only functioning robotaxi service in the U.S., is putting a lot of energy into addressing these concerns.
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Now, in a just-released research study with insurance company Swiss Re, Waymo says its Waymo Driver service has better safety performance metrics than human drivers.
The study compared insurance claims against Waymo with those against human drivers, using Swiss Re's data from over 500,000 claims and over 200 billion claims miles. Compared to humans, the data for the Waymo driver showed an 88% decrease in property damage claims and a 92% decrease in personal injury claims.
In real terms, the service was only involved in nine property damage claims and two bodily injury claims over the 25.3 million miles already driven by the Waymo driver. According to Swiss Re, human drivers would face 78 property damage and 26 bodily injury claims for the same distance.
“This analysis complements our safety impact data showing that over 25 million fully autonomous miles, Waymo drivers had fewer serious collisions than human drivers, regardless of who was at fault,” Waymo says in its blog.
So far, Waymo, an Alphabet-owned company, has been the only robotaxi service provider to convince U.S. regulators of the safety of its technology.
On the other hand, General Motors-backed Cruise had to stop testing last year after one of its vehicles fatally struck a pedestrian. GM also recently announced that it would stop funding Cruise altogether.
As for Tesla, regulators have opened an investigation into 2.4 million Tesla vehicles equipped with full self-driving software after three reported collisions and one fatal accident. Tesla still hopes to launch its Cybercab robotaxi as a service in 2025.
Of course, Tesla CEO Elon Musk appears to be taking a different approach than Waymo to addressing safety concerns: Now freshly named head of a newly created government agency, Musk appears to have convinced the new Trump administration to relax regulations self-driving vehicles, including accident reporting.
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