If numbers speak louder than words, Waymo cars have just won the road safety challenge. With statistics that speak of 12,5 times greater safety than human driving, the independent study presented by a Swiss insurance company marks a decisive turning point in the debate on autonomous driving.
The numbers of safety
A systematic review condotto Swiss Re analyzed the performance of Waymo cars over an impressive sample of over 40 million kilometers (25,3 million miles) traveled. In this enormous range, autonomous vehicles recorded only 9 accidents with material damage and 2 accidents with injuries.
To put these numbers into perspective, the same distance traveled by human drivers would have produced approximately 78 claims for material damage and 26 for injuries.
Better than human guidance
The difference is remarkable: Waymo cars prevented 69 minor accidents and, more importantly, prevented injuries to 24 potential victims. These results are even more significant considering that No fatal accidents occurred during all road tests.
The success of Waymo cars is based on a combination of advanced technologies, including the TO DEAL, rigorous security redundancies, and a methodical approach that prioritizes reliability over speed of deployment. The company, backed by A, has shown that patience and precision in the development of autonomous driving can lead to exceptional results. And this is not a given, given the competitors: one in particular, the leader in the electric car sector that is about to enter the market with its Robovan and Robocab. You know who he is, right?
Waymo Cars, Comparison with Tesla
The study offers an interesting comparison with other players in the sector, in particular Tesla. The CEO Elon Musk promises that its Full Self-Driving (FSD) system will reach human-driver safety within the next three months, but Tesla's driver-assist systems are under close scrutiny.
The American authority National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has linked Tesla driver-assist systems to hundreds of crashes, including 13 fatal accidents resulting in 14 fatalities and 49 injuries. And these are only the formally investigated cases. It is true that compared to Waymo cars (real taxis already in service) these are private vehicles that have often suffered from excessive carelessness on the part of the drivers, but this is not enough to justify the error rate.
The difference in approaches is clear: Waymo has chosen a longer but safer path, investing time and resources to ensure maximum reliability. Tesla, on the other hand, has opted for a more aggressive approach, releasing beta software to regular drivers and hoping for the best results.
Waymo Cars, Future Prospects
The data, in summary, suggests that autonomous driving is not only a viable alternative, but potentially much safer than human driving. And this will have significant implications for the future of transportation, insurance, and road safety in general.
The study is a small milestone in validating self-driving technology. Waymo cars are proving that, with the right approach and the right technology, autonomous vehicles can not only match but significantly exceed the safety of human driving. Objections to this point, in other words, are set to fall away.
