On December 19, the self-driving taxi company Waymo published new safety research on its vehicles: “Across 25.3 million miles, the Waymo Driver was involved in just two bodily injury claims.” This injury rate is 92 percent lower than that of the overall driving population and 90 percent lower than those driving vehicles with advanced safety technologies like automatic braking.”
As Waymo explained:
Today, we’re sharing our new cutting-edge research with Swiss Re, one of the world’s leading reinsurers, analyzing liability claims related to collisions from 25.3 million fully autonomous miles driven by Waymo. The study uses auto liability claims aggregate statistics as a proxy for at-fault collisions and expands on our previous research. It demonstrates that as we’ve scaled operations across Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin, the Waymo Driver significantly outperforms both the overall driving population and the latest generation of human-driven vehicles equipped with advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS).
The study compared Waymo’s liability claims to human driver baselines, which are based on Swiss Re’s data from over 500,000 claims and over 200 billion miles of exposure. It found that the Waymo Driver demonstrated better safety performance when compared to human-driven vehicles, with an 88% reduction in property damage claims and 92% reduction in bodily injury claims. In real numbers, across 25.3 million miles, the Waymo Driver was involved in just nine property damage claims and two bodily injury claims. Both bodily injury claims are still open and described in the paper. For the same distance, human drivers would be expected to have 78 property damage and 26 bodily injury claims.
Notably, the Waymo Driver’s safety advantages hold true even when compared to newer vehicles (2018-2021 models) equipped with modern safety technology. This includes advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) such as automated emergency braking, forward collision warning, lane keeping assistance, and blind spot warning. When compared to this group, the Waymo Driver showed an 86% reduction in property damage claims and 90% reduction in bodily injury claims.
Waymo self-driving taxis now transport thousands of passengers every day in American cities. Robotaxis aren’t the only robots are making life better.
Robots are also saving lives by doing difficult and dangerous tasks. German robots are hunting the North Sea for tens of thousands of unexploded World War II bombs.
Scientists have developed tiny robots made of human cells to repair damaged cells. Nanorobots are also being used to fight cancer. “In a major advancement in nanomedicine, Arizona State University scientists…have successfully programmed nanorobots to shrink tumors by cutting off their blood supply.”
Robots with artificial intelligence have been spreading on Japanese farms. In the U.S., farming robots now use artificial intelligence to kill 100,000 weeds per hour. Drones with artificial intelligence will make farming easier.
Robots replaced some fast-food workers after California increased the minimum wage for fast-food workers to $20 per hour, which many restaurants just couldn’t afford. Thousands of fast-food workers lost their jobs due to the minimum wage hike
