Waymo’s driverless vehicles had a police-reportable crash involvement rate 68% lower than human drivers per mile in the cities studied, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says.
Researchers compared roughly 50 million driverless miles in San Francisco, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Austin with human miles in the same places, using only crashes a person would typically report to police. City splits: 76% lower in Phoenix, 35% in San Francisco, 71% in Los Angeles, and 4% higher in Austin where the sample was small. Waymo also showed 85% fewer single-vehicle and 81% fewer injury crashes per mile. IIHS warns federal AV crash tracking needs improvement as fleets grow; the study coding method is not scalable.