Waymo’s new website aims to prove its driverless cars are the ‘world’s most reliable’ drivers – NBC Bay Area

Waymo, the driverless car company owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, has launched a new mobile app. new website It touts the safety record of its fleet of hundreds of autonomous vehicles in California and Arizona.

The site, called a “road safety data center,” details the company’s crash history over the past four years and the number of driverless miles driven in its three current markets — San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix. Waymo also offers analytics of its data, describing its autonomous vehicles as “better than humans” at avoiding crashes that result in injuries, airbag deployments, and police reports.

Waymo’s self-driving vehicles have been involved in 192 crashes since 2020, 18 of which resulted in some type of injury in the three cities the ride-hailing company currently serves. When comparing its autonomous vehicles to human drivers in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, Waymo estimates that its autonomous vehicles were involved in 72% fewer injury crashes, 84% fewer airbag deployment crashes, and 51% fewer police-reported crashes.

Waymo’s efforts to increase transparency come as California regulators are trying to force autonomous vehicle companies to disclose more details about crashes involving their driverless vehicles. Last week, the California DMV published an offer Strengthening reporting requirements by requiring autonomous vehicle companies to notify state governments when one of their vehicles is involved in a crash, which essentially mirrors requirements put in place by the federal government under the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

California regulations require autonomous vehicle companies to report only crashes that occur during testing, meaning autonomous vehicles used for public toll-free service would not have to report crashes to the DMV. The proposed change also creates a framework for Testing large driverless vehicles California highways require regulatory approval, which can take up to two years.

While Waymo has repeatedly said it stands by its safety record, the Mountain View-based company has previously had to defend itself against a series of accusations, including unusual and potentially dangerous maneuvers by its self-driving vehicles. obstructing first responders, almost hit a school crossing guard And honking at other Waymo vehicles during night hours.

Waymo’s latest safety study builds on a similar finding it published last yearHe also tried to make safety comparisons between the company’s driverless cars and human drivers.

But the task is daunting. Transportation experts, including those who have previously worked with Waymo and GM’s Cruise to create such metrics, caution that it may be too early to draw definitive safety conclusions given the limited data. While Waymo has logged 22 million driverless miles since March 2019, the distance traveled still represents less than 1% of the roughly 15 trillion miles humans have driven in the same time period.

While Waymo leaders acknowledge the inherent difficulties in making comparisons, they believe their analysis could help standardize autonomous vehicle safety metrics in the future.

“The metrics that we have … we think are state-of-the-art — they’re like the best metrics that nobody else has done,” said Kristofer Kusano, a security researcher at Waymo. “Of course, as researchers, we always want to push the boundaries and always find better, and there’s always better, but these metrics that we have today are useful.”

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