Weeks after one of its autonomous cars drove itself into a telephone pole, Waymo has released a statement claiming that its autonomous vehicles are still 200%-350% better at avoiding a crash than human drivers. Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc, Google’s parent company, was formed in 2016 as a spin-off of Google’s self-driving car division. In 2020, it became the first company to offer a fully self-driving taxi service.
But the company has been hit with negative headlines. By 2021, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in America recorded 150 crashes involving Waymo’s vehicles. In December 2023, two Waymo ‘robotaxis’ reportedly crashed into the same truck being towed on a highway, just minutes apart. In February 2024, one of its cars hit a cyclist in San Fransisco.
These incidents prompted a recall of 444 of Waymo’s autonomous cars.
There has also been a public backlash with the service. Numerous people have been interfering with and vandalising Waymo cars in protest that the vehicles are unsafe. Cars have been coned off to block their path, people have covered their sensors, and there are even reports of some of them being set on fire.
Last month, the NHTSA launched in investigation into Waymo, focusing on 31 incidents involving the ‘robotaxis’ crashing into closed gates, driving on the wrong side of the road, and being involved with car fires.
But Waymo hit back just this month on X. It posted that its vehicles, compared to human driver covering the same 14.8 million miles, had 30 fewer injury-causing crashes and 32 fewer police-reported crashes. The company claims that this makes it 2-3.5 times safer than human drivers.
