Driverless-car crashes less frequent, cause less damage, according to insurance research

Waymo is using insurance data to demonstrate that its self-driving taxis are safer than human-driven vehicles.

The company, owned by Google parent Alphabet, has published research led by insurer Swiss Re that it says shows how driverless vehicles crash less frequently and do less damage than those piloted by humans.

The study comes at a pivotal moment for the self-driving taxi industry, particularly in San Francisco where the recent decision of the California Public Utilities Commission to allow Waymo and chief rival Cruise to extend their operations in the city has been widely disputed by officials and residents, amid claims of the autonomous vehicles causing traffic disruption and blocking self responder vehicles.

The furor has led to a wider debate regarding driverless transport as a whole, so the findings of Waymo and Swiss Re are well-timed to shed some new light on the discussion.

According to Waymo: “In over 3.8 million miles that Waymo drove without a human behind the steering wheel across San Francisco, CA and Phoenix, AZ, there were zero bodily injury claims and a significant reduction in the property damage claims frequency.”

What’s particularly significant about the research, Waymo says, is that it addresses the issue of how to establish a “robust and well-calibrated” benchmark for human performance to compare against AVs. It explains that the study does this by “establishing a comparison baseline based on liability insurance claims data.”

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