Waymo Robotaxis Safer Than Any Human-Driven Cars — MUCH Safer – CleanTechnica

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Swiss Re, a top reinsurer globally, has analyzed a lot of data, and it has determined that Waymo’s robotaxis are safer than human drivers, and even safer than human drivers of new cars with the latest advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS).

Swiss Re has more than 500,000 liability claims and more than 200 billion miles of exposure in its data bank. Waymo has logged 25.3 million fully autonomous miles available for analysis as well. These are the big top-line results:

• Waymo Driver provided an 88% reduction in property damage claims.
• Waymo Driver provided a 92% reduction in bodily injury claims.

Here’s another way of looking at the difference:

• Waymo Driver was involved in 9 property damage claims and 2 bodily injury claims across those 25.3 million miles.
• The total expected for human drivers across 25.3 million miles would be 78 property damage and 26 bodily injury claims!

That’s quite an improvement.

We’ve seen that modern ADAS help tremendously in cutting down accidents and injuries as well. Given how much they’ve advanced, one might think they could post big improvements and a better matchup for Waymo. However, the improvements from modern ADAS aren’t comparable to Waymo Driver’s achievements. This analysis also crunched the numbers for 2018–2021 models with such systems, which include automated emergency braking, forward collision warning, lane keeping assistance, and blind spot warning. Here are the top-line findings again:

• Waymo Driver provided an 86% reduction in property damage claims.
• Waymo Driver provided a 90% reduction in bodily injury claims.

ADAS help, but not nearly as much as giving the wheel to Waymo helps.

“Our research shows how insurance data can help evaluate autonomous vehicle safety and provide the framework needed to support widespread adoption,” said Ali Shahkarami, Global Head P&C Solutions at Swiss Re. “By analyzing a larger dataset across multiple cities, we deepened our understanding of how this technology performs in real-world conditions. These promising results help underscore the potential of this technology to create a safer future for our roads.”

The research has been provided to a scientific journal, and you can read a pre-print of it here.

“This analysis complements our safety impact data, which indicates that over 25 million fully autonomous miles, the Waymo Driver had fewer serious collisions than human drivers, independent of who was at fault. This Swiss Re study provides robust evidence that Waymo had no responsibility in the vast majority of the collisions its vehicles were involved in,” Waymo adds.