Three weeks after one of Waymo’s autonomous vehicles crashed into a telephone pole for no apparent reason (causing the recall of 672 cars (in circulation), the company issued a statement assuring that its autonomous vehicles are between 200 and 350% better than humans at avoiding accidents.
Waymo is a company of Alphabet Inc. (parent company of Google), created back in 2016 as a spin-off of the division of Google autonomous vehicles. Four years later, in 2020, Waymo became the first company to offer a service to the public as a fully autonomous taxi service.
You can search for it on the Internet. This autonomous vehicle company has been full of negative headlines in his short career. Already in 2021, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) had recorded 150 accidents involving Waymo vehicles. In December 2023, two Waymo robotaxis collided with a truck being towed on a highway, just minutes apart. In February of this year, one of its cars hit a cyclist in San Francisco. The last two incidents led to the recall of 444 company cars.
There have been many public reactions against the service and numerous incidents of people interfering with and vandalizing cars, protesting under the pretext that Waymo cars are not safe: They have been blocked, their sensors covered, and people have even set them on fire. fire.
Last month, the NHTSA launched an investigation into Waymo, focusing on 31 incidents, including some curious ones, such as several robot taxis that crashed into closed doors, drove on the wrong side of the road or, outright, caught fire.
And this month Waymo posted on According to the company, these figures make its vehicles 3.5 and 2 times safer, respectively, than vehicles driven by humans:
New data shows that the Waymo Driver continues to make roads safer. Over 14.8M rider-only miles driven through the end of March, it was up to 3.5x better in avoiding crashes that cause injuries and 2x better in avoiding police-reported crashes than human drivers in SF & Phoenix. pic.twitter.com/w6uUIAoe9t
— Waymo (@Waymo) June 18, 2024
The figure comes from the sum of 3.83 million miles traveled in San Francisco with 17 fewer crashes with injuries and 12 fewer crashes reported by police, along with 10.92 million miles in Phoenix with 13 and 20 fewer, respectively. Waymo currently operates self-driving cars in both cities and hopes to soon offer service in Los Angeles and Austin, Texas.
Via: X.
