Now operating in cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, Austin and Atlanta, Waymo’s robots have driven nearly 57 million miles, according to data from the self-driving car company. With all these miles (timed) bands restricted, the letter owns operations recently released a research paper highlighting some impressive data.
Waymo’s report focused on events between its vehicles and “vulnerable road users.” Compared to human drivers, Waymo’s autonomous driving, electric Jaguars experienced 92% of pedestrian crashes, resulting in 82% fewer crashes in injuries, causing injuries to cyclists with 82% fewer crashes and 82% fewer crashes caused by injuries. There is also good news for car-to-car crashes compared to human drivers, with 96% fewer crashes in intersections encountered in Waymos and 85% fewer crashes suspected of serious or more serious injuries.
“Seeing real-world data shows that it outperforms human drivers in terms of safety,” Jonathan Adkins, CEO of the nonprofit Highway Safety Administration, said in a Waymo press release. “There are fewer crashes and fewer injuries, especially for those walking and cycling, which is exactly the advancement we want to see from self-driving cars.”
With Waymo’s additional services in Washington, D.C., Miami and Tokyo, can we expect road safety progress in the city of Waymo? David Kidd, a senior research scientist at the Institute for Highway Safety Insurance, said. While Waymo proves that its individual cars are generally safer than human drivers, the company’s services aren’t enough to show that it makes the entire road network of the city safer, Kidd told Mashable. Kidd added that Waymo’s effective technology and positive safety record bodes well for us to get there one day.
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Kidd: Waymo completed several of these reports and they were very transparent about the methods they used to get the data. They have established and expanded the previous ones [reports]. This is…the most comprehensive look of its AV to date, and the results are really encouraging.
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Waymo seems to be finding its biggest success compared to other AV efforts by Tesla and GM. Why?
I can’t talk about Waymo’s strategy and philosophy and the differences between Waymo and Cruise and other AV companies, but it’s certain that Waymo is working on research to do research to prove the safety of vehicles on real roads and to expose that. So they published the study and now also posted information on their website about crashes and exposures driven in different deployment areas so that anyone can go and copy what they do or do their own analysis. No other companies are doing this right now, and it’s something we hope other companies will follow Waymo’s leadership and stay transparent.
The number of pedestrians and cyclists killed by cars has been steadily rising over the years. Can Waymo propose arguments that can help reduce these numbers?
As pedestrian crashes have been increasing since 2009; I think deadly pedestrian crashes have increased by 83% since that year (Kidd referenced a 2022 report showing pedestrians killed by cars have a 40-year high). Of course, these automated vehicles are indeed good at preventing themselves from clashing with pedestrians, as this study provides evidence; this will help solve the problem. The caveat is that AVs are not deployed everywhere, they’re certainly not in everyone’s driveway and not accessible to everyone so if we’re really going to tackle that pedestrian crash problem, it’s going to take multiple types of counter measures and solutions ranging from the technology in cars we can buy today like pedestrian automatic braking, changes in infrastructure that reduces conflicts between pedestrians and vehicles, as well as changing things that can make drivers more aware, as well as pedestrians know their surroundings and pay more attention to distracting driving and distracted walking.
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Since consumers can’t buy their own AV yet, will we see a significant drop in crash deaths when automated cars are only available in the car park?
The natural expansion Waymo does is to better understand how its vehicle’s deployment inside the city or within the transport network affects the overall security of that network. They did a good job showing that their vehicles had less crash frequency and had fewer crash rates than human crash rates in the same deployment area. What they need to show is if they have 100 Waymo vehicles or 1,000 Waymo vehicles, is the transportation system in the area safer for everyone? This is the next work – will we receive a shared safety benefit?
Waymo does prove that they can develop a technology and algorithm to get sensor information and keep the vehicle running safely. Can we take some of these learnings and improvements and apply them to the technology in the vehicles you and I can buy? Rumors are that they may work with Toyota. Hopefully that’s one thing – Waymo takes their benefits, algorithms and software and what they do on the autonomous driving stage and applies it to safety technology and converts it into vehicles that Toyota and other automakers sell to consumers today. Here, I think you’ll see faster progress in AVS propeling conventional vehicles.
Tell us more about how AV technology can help all cars be safer.
Some more positive things are that when you approach the intersection, the vehicle is able to see that there are other cars coming and predict that some other vehicles will cross your road without stopping – it will slow you down to avoid conflict.
AVs can illustrate the potential and some reasons why a driver slips down in terms of behavior and how he operates a vehicle and why he crashes. At present, we don’t know this. The biggest contributor to the death of the crash, and always permanently, is speeding, damage, such as alcohol disorders, distraction is another component, but the actual speeding and damage is huge, automated vehicles comply with the law; they won’t speed up, nor will they be harmed. This alone eliminates a lot of death.
