Waymo#6
About
Waymo is Alphabet's autonomous driving company, operating the Waymo One robotaxi service across U.S. cities with its fully driverless Waymo Driver technology.
From X
PSA: Do not open your windows in Waymos. I was assaulted and robbed in a Waymo in the Mission District. I was punched three times in the face and head. Waymo treats criminals as pedestrians and stops moving, leaving you vulnerable. They gave me 5 free rides tho https://t.co/ALaJKDN6Kh
🚨 Phoenix, AZ - DEVELOPING STORY Waymo drove onto Metro Rail tracks and got stuck on the line, forcing the passenger to escape and run across the roadway. https://t.co/aoq2xnECZX
Waymo is so safe that if every car was driven like a Waymo, about 9% of America's life expectancy gap would disappear. 9 percent Americans die in car accidents *that often*. https://t.co/GaxmnBuyQZ
As a neurosurgeon I care a lot about road safety. By now you’ve probably seen @Waymo’s stunning safety results (like 91% fewer serious crashes). But they didn’t just publish data headlines. They released the raw CSV files and data dictionaries. I did a much deeper analysis. A fascinating story emerges when you analyze how they’re achieving this. This isn’t incremental improvement - it’s categorical. We’re looking at the potential elimination of traffic deaths as a leading cause of mortality. The intersection breakthrough: Waymo has essentially solved intersection crashes, with 95% fewer injury incidents than human drivers in the same locations. That’s transforming the deadliest driving scenario. The national math: If every US vehicle performed like Waymo, we’d prevent 33,000-39,000 deaths annually and save $0.9-1.25 trillion in societal costs. Even partial adoption at 27% would save ~10,000 lives per year. In terms of magnitude, this would be the equivalent of eliminating every pedestrian death nationally in a year. The physics signature: Here’s what fascinates me: 47% of Waymo’s contacts involve less than 1 mph delta-V. They’re not just avoiding crashes; they’re converting unavoidable incidents into gentle bumps. It’s like having physics itself on your side. We’re not talking about marginal safety gains. The data represents a fundamental shift from harm reduction to harm prevention. The methodology matters: I used their dynamic geographic benchmarks (comparing like-for-like road conditions) and verified the findings hold across San Francisco, Phoenix, LA, and Austin. The safety advantage actually increases in more complex urban environments. Link to raw data below…. Notes on my approach: Analysis based on 96 million miles of Waymo Rider-Only (RO) data through June 2025, utilizing Waymo's dynamic geographic benchmarks to compare Waymo Driver performance against human drivers under similar road conditions and operational design domains. The projections for national impact (deaths prevented, societal costs) involve several assumptions. Given Waymo's zero reported fatalities, the direct serious injury reductions were mapped to national fatality statistics using established NHTSA-derived ratios that correlate serious injury crash rates with fatality rates. This extrapolation assumes that Waymo's observed serious injury prevention capability would translate proportionally to fatality prevention. Societal cost savings are estimated by applying average per-fatality and per-injury economic costs (e.g., medical, lost productivity, quality of life) as published by NHTSA, scaling these national averages to the projected number of avoided fatalities and injuries based on Waymo's safety performance. These figures represent the potential annual impact if the Waymo Driver's safety profile were widely integrated into the national fleet. @ethanteicher
Here's my first Waymo ride in Nashville last night. It started off well, but the vehicle got confused and stuck 4 minutes in. After about 10 minutes of trying, rider support got it moving again, but then it couldn't continue, so they had to escalate to another specialist. After another ~10 minutes, they said the Waymo could not complete the trip, and that I should call an Uber or Lyft ride to reach my destination. I was 3-4 minutes from my destination when the Waymo initially got stuck. The vehicle was on call with support for about 20 minutes in total. While it would have been nice to reach my destination lol, I'm honestly not mad about it because it was interesting to see the whole process of them trying to get it going again and how Waymo support deals with situations like this (which are pretty rare). The support team was really nice and communicative. Have to fly back home to New England tomorrow, but hopefully will try another robotaxi ride in Nashville in the future, and of course other cities.
Comparison of Tesla's vs Waymo's Robotaxi geofence map in Austin, Texas. Today, Waymo more than doubled in size their geofence area. https://t.co/iT8iTQXevV
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