New Data Shows Waymos Are So Safe That It's Almost Comical

"Last month, Waymo released new safety statistics, boasting that its fleet of vehicles had covered 96 million miles as of June. And the results from all those miles traveled are, on their face, staggering. The company claims that its driverless vehicles are 91 percent less likely to be involved in crashes resulting in serious injury compared to an "average human driver of the same distance.""

"Between mid-February and mid-August of this year, the Google-owned company's vehicles were involved in a total of 45 crashes that were reported to the government. However, as Understanding AI points out, a "large majority of these crashes were clearly not Waymo's fault, including 24 crashes where the Waymo wasn't moving at all and another seven where the Waymo was rear-ended by another vehicle." Tellingly, three of them involved a Waymo passenger flinging open their door without looking, which injured a bicycle or scooter."

"The Atlantic, in fact, draws an interesting contrast: in many ways, Waymo's approach to AI is proving to be quite a bit safer than the OpenAI-style chatbots taking the world by storm, which have been spreading disinformation in droves, trapping users in dangerous mental health crises, and even encouraging teenagers to kill themselves. "I like to tell people that if Waymo worked as well as ChatGPT, they'd be dead," University of South Carolina School of Law self-driving-car expert Bryant Walker Smith told the magazine."

Waymo released safety statistics showing its fleet covered 96 million miles as of June. The company reports its driverless vehicles are 91 percent less likely to be involved in crashes resulting in serious injury than an average human driver over the same distance. Between mid-February and mid-August, Waymo vehicles were involved in 45 crashes reported to the government. A large majority of those crashes were not the company's fault, including 24 where a Waymo was stationary and seven where it was rear-ended. Three incidents involved passengers opening doors that injured bicyclists or scooter riders, and one involved a wheel falling off.

Read at Futurism