By Trent Victor, Director of Security Analysis & Greatest Practices, Waymo —
The trail to Imaginative and prescient Zero requires lowering extreme crashes and enhancing the protection of these most in danger. Our newest analysis paper reveals that the Waymo Driver is making important strides in each areas. By lowering essentially the most harmful crashes and offering higher safety for pedestrians, cyclists, and different susceptible street customers, Waymo is making streets safer in cities the place it operates.
The paper, accepted to be printed within the Visitors Damage Prevention Journal, expands on our Security Affect Hub analysis, offering a deeper evaluation of Waymo’s efficiency throughout 11 totally different crash sorts in comparison with human drivers. It additionally gives new insights into Waymo’s constructive affect on critical damage crash charges.
Kinds of crashes used for the Waymo Driver and human benchmark comparisons
The analysis finds that, in comparison with human benchmarks over 56.7 million miles and no matter who was at fault, the Waymo Driver had:
- Safer interactions with susceptible street customers (VRUs) with substantial reductions in crashes involving accidents amongst pedestrians (92% discount), cyclists (82% discount), and motorcyclists (82% discount).
- 96% fewer injury-involving intersection crashes, which, in accordance with NHTSA, are a number one reason for extreme street hurt for human drivers. This discount might be largely attributed to the Waymo Driver’s potential to detect and appropriately reply to autos operating a purple gentle.
- 85% fewer crashes with suspected critical or worse accidents. Constructing on our earlier analysis, which demonstrated Waymo’s important reductions throughout all accidents mixed, the brand new research gives early proof for related advantages in critical accidents alone. The outcomes are statistically important however as a result of critical damage instances are, happily, uncommon, they’re based mostly on a small variety of occasions. We are going to proceed to observe outcomes and achieve better confidence as we accumulate extra miles.
These findings add to the rising physique of knowledge that the Waymo Driver is lowering essentially the most harmful crash sorts, contributing to safer roadways, and pushing ahead a imaginative and prescient of zero visitors deaths and critical accidents on our roads. Whereas this specific analysis didn’t account for crash contribution, a earlier research led by the insurance coverage firm Swiss Re demonstrated that the Waymo Driver’s constructive affect is much more important when contribution is taken under consideration.
“It’s thrilling to see the true constructive affect that Waymo is making on the streets of America as we proceed to increase,” stated Mauricio Peña, Waymo’s Chief Security Officer. “This analysis reinforces the rising proof that the Waymo Driver is taking part in an important position in lowering critical crashes and defending all street customers.”
“It’s encouraging to see real-world knowledge exhibiting Waymo outperforming human drivers on the subject of security. Fewer crashes and fewer accidents — particularly for folks strolling and biking — is strictly the type of progress we need to see from autonomous autos,” — stated Jonathan Adkins, Chief Govt Officer at Governors Freeway Security Affiliation.
Please go to https://youtu.be/nAuna_qzf6k if the embedded video participant doesn’t work.
As Waymo will increase in scale, we stay up for strengthening our security knowledge, assessing the long-term affect on street security, and serving to to advance conversations amongst researchers, policymakers, and security teams.
We stay up for persevering with this dialog and dealing towards a future the place critical visitors accidents, one of many largest causes of loss of life within the U.S, are dramatically lowered. For these involved in a deeper dive into the info and methodology, we encourage you to discover the full research, and our rolling security knowledge hub.
About Waymo
Waymo is an autonomous driving expertise firm with a mission to make it protected and straightforward for folks and issues to get the place they’re going. Since our begin because the Google Self-Driving Automotive Mission in 2009, Waymo has been centered on constructing the World’s Most Skilled Driver to enhance the world’s entry to mobility whereas saving hundreds of lives now misplaced to visitors crashes. The Waymo Driver powers Waymo One, the world’s first totally driverless ride-hailing service, in addition to Waymo By way of, our trucking and native supply service. Up to now, Waymo has pushed over 20 million miles autonomously on public roads throughout 25 U.S. cities and pushed over 15 billion miles in simulation. For extra info, please go to www.waymo.com.
Supply: Waymo
