Using human crash data, Waymo estimated that human drivers on the same roads would get into 78 crashes serious enough to trigger an airbag. By comparison, Waymo’s driverless vehicles only got into 13 airbag crashes. That represents an 83 percent reduction in airbag crashes relative to typical human drivers.
This is slightly worse than last September, when Waymo estimated an 84 percent reduction in airbag crashes over Waymo’s first 21 million miles.
Over the same 44 million miles, Waymo estimates that human drivers would get into 190 crashes serious enough to cause an injury. Instead, Waymo only got in 36 injury-causing crashes across San Francisco or Phoenix. That’s an 81 percent reduction in injury-causing crashes.
This is a significant improvement over last September, when Waymo estimated its cars had 73 percent fewer injury-causing crashes over its first 21 million driverless miles.
The above analysis counts all crashes, whether or not Waymo’s technology was at fault. Things look even better for Waymo if we focus on crashes where Waymo was determined to be responsible for a crash.
To assess this, Waymo co-authored a study in December with the insurance giant Swiss Re. It focused on crashes that led to successful insurance claims against Waymo. This data seems particularly credible because third parties, not Waymo, decide when a crash is serious enough to file an insurance claim. And claims adjusters, not Waymo, decide whether to hold Waymo responsible for a crash.
But one downside is that it takes a few months for insurance claims to be filed. So the December report focused on crashes that occurred through July 2024.
Waymo had completed 25 million driverless miles by July 2024. And by the end of November 2024, Waymo had faced only two potentially successful claims for bodily injury. Both claims are pending, which means they could still be resolved in Waymo’s favor.
One of them was this crash that I described at the beginning of my September article about Waymo’s safety record:
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