Autonomous driving safety

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
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Like it or not, autonomous vehicles (AVs) are coming and all of us on the roads are part of the experiment.

In the US, how safe are AVs?

The US leader in autonomy, Waymo, a Google/Alphabet-backed venture, periodically releases safety data that provides a window into their AV’s safety.

The other big news maker in US AVs, Tesla, doesn’t release detailed data on its advanced driver-assist safety and does not yet have AVs (unsupervised) on public roads (instead they are testing a small fleet with humans in the vehicle who supervise the AI driving).

Waymo has AVs that are rider-only (robot drives the car without human supervision) on city roads (no highways yet) in Phoenix, San Fran, LA and Austin.

After about 96 million miles, Waymo had about 304 fewer injury crashes, 80% lower, than a human driver benchmark.

More details here (Safety Impact)

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Risk of Tesla camera-only self-driving
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Hmmm, as I am due, after today, to renew my DL, I wonder if one is needed if you own an AV? You aren’t driving, just a passenger, it would be like taking an Uber, Lyft or taxi!

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Cool videos of Waymo perception.

New York
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Tokyo
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Waymo expanding to London.

Great news, Londoners! We’re bringing our fully autonomous ride-hailing service across the pond, where we intend to offer rides – with no human behind the wheel – in 2026.

(Hello London! Your Waymo ride is arriving)

And other US cities:

Miami, Washington, D.C., and Dallas.

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Rough comparison of Waymo and Tesla incidents.

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Waymo’s expansion, current and planned (interesting times).

Currently, 11 cities have true autonomous driving and 6 have current commercial service and 4 (testing now) are planned to have commercial service by end of 2025. One city (testing now) has service planned for 2026.

Waymo plans for at least a total of 17 cities to have commercial service by the end of 2026.

Driverless is true autonomy (unsupervised by a human).
Supervised is human responsible for the driving even if AI/robot is driving, which is used to test the AI driver.

Commercial driverless operations:

  • San Francisco [and Bay Area: San Mateo, Redwood City, Palo Alto, San Jose]
  • Los Angeles
  • Phoenix
  • Atlanta
  • Austin
  • Miami (began Nov 18)

Driverless testing, commercial service expected in 2026:

  • Dallas - end of 2025
  • Houston - end of 2025
  • San Antonio - end of 2025
  • Orlando - end of 2025
  • San Diego - in 2026

Supervised testing, commercial service expected in 2026:

  • Las Vegas
  • Denver
  • Detroit
  • Nashville
  • Washington DC
  • London

Supervised testing for service in 2026 or beyond (aka, no confirmed launch timeline):

  • Tokyo
  • Seattle
  • Buffalo
  • New York
  • Philadelphia
  • Boston
  • New Orleans
  • Tampa
  • Minneapolis
  • Newark
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Predictions for 2026.

Drive and ride safe.