Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to that article, Waymo crashes 2.3x more often than human drivers (every 98k miles vs 229k miles), which is clearly false. I think it's far more likely that humans don't report most minor collisions to insurance, and that both Robotaxis and Waymo are safer than human drivers on average.
> According to that article, Waymo crashes 2.3x more often than human drivers (every 98k miles vs 229k miles), which is clearly false. Why is it clearly false? It might be false, but clearly? I would definitely like to see evidence either way. > I think it's far more likely that humans don't report most minor collisions to insurance, and that both Robotaxis and Waymo are safer than human drivers on average. That soun…
If you go to the NHTSA's page regarding their Standing General Order[2] and download the CSV of all ADS incidents[3], you can filter where the reporting entity is Waymo and find 520 rows. If you filter where the vehicle was stopped or parked, you'll find 318 crashes. If you scan through the narrative column, you'll see things like a Waymo yielding to pedestrians in a crosswalk and getting rear-ended, or waiting for a red light to change and getting rear-ended, or yielding to a pickup truck that then shifted into reverse and backed into the Waymo. In other words: the majority of Waymo collisions are due to human drivers.
So either Waymos are ridiculously unlucky, or when these sorts of things happen between two human driven cars, it's rarely reported to insurance. In my experience, if there's only minor damage, both parties exchange contact info and don't involve the authorities. Maybe one compensates the other for damage, or maybe neither party cares enough about a minor dent or scrape to deal with it. I've done this when someone rear-ended me, and I know my parents have done it when they've had collisions.
If human driven vehicles really did average 229k miles between any collision of any kind, we'd see many more pristine older vehicles. But if you pay attention to other cars on the road or in parking lots, you'll see far more dents and scratches than would be expected from that statistic. And that's not even counting the damage that gets repaired!
1. See page 13 of https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/2025-04/third-am...
2. https://www.nhtsa.gov/laws-regulations/standing-general-orde...
3. https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/ffdd/sgo-2021-01/SGO-2021-01_In...