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

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

The Alphabet-owned institution revealed a caller information hub today, complete pinch glossy graphics and a multitude of charts that will beryllium periodically updated, pinch nan overarching connection that its autonomous vehicles are not to beryllium feared. The move comes arsenic Waymo seeks to grow its footprint, triumph complete caller customers, and cement its lead successful nan title to deploy much driverless cars. It besides comes arsenic information regulators person begun to return a harder look astatine nan full autonomous conveyance manufacture — including Waymo.

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

Waymo thinks its caller attack to transparency tin thief move nan tide successful its favor. The hub contains a batch of new, antecedently unreported information, including nan number of driverless miles Waymo has racked up successful each of nan 4 cities successful which it operates (or, arsenic nan 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, nan institution had only driven 7.1 cardinal rider-only miles. Now, it has complete 22.2 cardinal miles crossed 4 cities — which reflects a 212 percent summation complete 8 months. The institution says it has astir 300 vehicles operating each successful San Francisco and Phoenix, its 2 main markets.

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

Now, it’s applying these formulas to a larger group of information — and nan numbers still look beautiful 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 nan quality benchmark, aliases 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 nan 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, sloppy of severity. For Waymo, that intends reporting a batch of highly insignificant bumps and scraps, which nan institution thinks tin skew nan public’s cognition of its vehicles. There is now a ample repository of crashes involving self-driving cars, but overmuch of it lacks important context.

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

“One mile per hr Delta-V is for illustration a very insignificant crash,” said Kristofer Kusano, unit information interrogator astatine Waymo. “So this is usually truthful insignificant of a clang that it’s not really moreover moving nan conveyance much.”

This each looks beautiful bully for Waymo, which is evidently nan eventual goal. But nan institution knows that it needs independent 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 investigation papers outlining its information attack and has submitted galore of them to peer-reviewed journals for publication — respective of which person already been accepted.

“We’re really excited astir that,” Victor said. “I consciousness privileged to person nan opportunity to publish.”

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