Waymo thinks it can overcome robotaxi skepticism with lots of safety data

How bash you person a skeptical public that your autonomous vehicles are not lone safer than quality drivers but besides a amended mode to get around? If you’re Waymo, the reply is information — and tons of it.

The Alphabet-owned institution revealed a caller information hub today, implicit with glossy graphics and a multitude of charts that volition beryllium periodically updated, with the overarching connection that its autonomous vehicles are not to beryllium feared. The determination comes arsenic Waymo seeks to grow its footprint, triumph implicit caller customers, and cement its pb successful the contention to deploy much driverless cars. It besides comes arsenic information regulators person begun to instrumentality a harder look astatine the full autonomous conveyance manufacture — including Waymo.

“This matters a batch to us,” said Trent Victor, manager of information probe and champion practices astatine Waymo, “to beryllium trusted.”

Waymo thinks its caller attack to transparency tin assistance crook the tide successful its favor. The hub contains a batch of new, antecedently unreported information, including the fig of driverless miles Waymo has racked up successful each of the 4 cities successful which it operates (or, arsenic the institution calls it, “RO miles” for “rider-only miles”). As of June 2024, Waymo has driven 15.4 cardinal miles successful Phoenix, 5.9 cardinal miles successful San Francisco, 855,000 miles successful Los Angeles, and 14,000 successful Austin.

The past clip Waymo released its information data, successful December 2023, the institution had lone driven 7.1 cardinal rider-only miles. Now, it has implicit 22.2 cardinal miles crossed 4 cities — which reflects a 212 percent summation implicit 8 months. The institution says it has astir 300 vehicles operating each successful San Francisco and Phoenix, its 2 main markets.

In searching for the champion mode to pass its information message, Waymo zeroed successful connected a look that compares its driverless vehicles to quality operator benchmarks successful crashes that origin injuries and crashes that effect successful constabulary reports. Last year, Waymo determined that its vehicles were 6.7 times little apt than quality drivers to beryllium progressive successful a clang resulting successful an injury, oregon an 85 percent reduction, and 2.3 times little apt to beryllium successful a police-reported crash, oregon a 57 percent reduction. The institution is lone presenting this information for Phoenix and San Francisco, the 2 cities wherever it has the astir miles traveled.

Now, it’s applying these formulas to a larger acceptable of information — and the numbers inactive look beauteous good. As of June 2024, Waymo’s robotaxis person 73 percent less injury-causing crashes arsenic compared to quality benchmarks and 48 percent less police-reported collisions. It besides added a caller category: airbag deployment crashes. Waymo says it has 26 less airbag deployments than the quality benchmark, oregon a alteration of 84 percent. It besides breaks retired each of these figures for Phoenix and San Francisco specifically.

Another conception of antecedently unreported information is the percent of Waymo’s crashes that are highly debased speed. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration requires autonomous conveyance operators to study each crashes and collisions, careless of severity. For Waymo, that means reporting a batch of highly insignificant bumps and scraps, which the institution thinks tin skew the public’s cognition of its vehicles. There is present a ample repository of crashes involving self-driving cars, but overmuch of it lacks important context.

The institution decided to bring much nuance to the government’s information by including a conception successful its information hub that highlights the percent of collisions with a Delta-V — a metric utilized to measurement the alteration successful velocity during a collision — that’s little than 1mph. Waymo recovered that 43 percent of the crashes disclosed to NHTSA had a Delta-V of little than 1mph. This includes crashes lone successful Phoenix and San Francisco.

“One mile per hr Delta-V is similar a precise insignificant crash,” said Kristofer Kusano, unit information researcher astatine Waymo. “So this is usually truthful insignificant of a clang that it’s not really adjacent moving the conveyance much.”

This each looks beauteous bully for Waymo, which is evidently the eventual goal. But the institution knows that it needs autarkic groups to verify this information — and replicate it — if it’s ever going to execute mainstream acceptance. To that end, Waymo has produced dozens of probe papers outlining its information attack and has submitted galore of them to peer-reviewed journals for work — respective of which person already been accepted.

“We’re truly excited astir that,” Victor said. “I consciousness privileged to person the accidental to publish.”

With the instauration of this caller information hub, Waymo is besides making its methodologies disposable for download, truthful much extracurricular researchers tin look astatine the earthy numbers. “[We’re] allowing radical to replicate the results,” Victor added. “See what we did, widen it, look astatine it done caller lenses, adhd much complexity, and just beforehand the science.”