According to a recent Swiss Re study, the Waymo Driver is safer than both the general driving population and the latest human-driven vehicles equipped with advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS).
The study compared Waymo’s liability claims to benchmarks for human drivers, using Swiss Re’s data from over 500,000 claims and 200 billion miles of exposure.
The Waymo Driver exhibited significantly better safety performance, with an 88% reduction in property damage claims and a 92% reduction in bodily injury claims compared to human-driven vehicles.
Across 25.3 million miles, the Waymo Driver recorded only nine property damage claims and two bodily injury claims. In contrast, human drivers would typically generate 78 property damage claims and 26 bodily injury claims over the same distance.
Compared to modern vehicles with advanced safety technology, including ADAS like automated emergency braking, forward collision warning, lane-keeping assistance, and blind spot warning, the Waymo Driver showed an 86% reduction in property damage claims and a 90% reduction in bodily injury claims.
The report highlights that across 25 million fully autonomous miles, the Waymo Driver experienced fewer serious collisions than human drivers, regardless of fault.
Mauricio Peña, Chief Safety Officer at Waymo, said, “Auto insurance claims data, traditionally used to assess human driver liability and risk, is a powerful tool in evaluating the safety performance of autonomous vehicles.”
He continued, “This is a truly groundbreaking study that not only validates the Waymo Driver’s strong safety record, but also provides a scalable framework for ongoing assessment of the impact autonomous vehicles make on road safety.”
Ali Shahkarami, Global Head P&C Solutions at Swiss Re, explained, “Our research shows how insurance data can help evaluate autonomous vehicle safety and provide the framework needed to support widespread adoption.
“By analysing a larger dataset across multiple cities, we deepened our understanding of how this technology performs in real-world conditions. These promising results help underscore the potential of this technology to create a safer future for our roads.”
Chris Moore, President of Apollo ibott, a Lloyd’s of London Syndicate, stated, “It is great to see Waymo placing such an emphasis on the importance of public acceptance of Autonomous Driving System technology, and we agree this can only be achieved through education and the sharing of data.”
He added, “This particular report provided a staggering benchmark in a 90% lower claims frequency compared to human driving of newer vehicles with the most advanced driving assistance technology. We highly commend Waymo for this work and look forward to future study releases as we continue to move to an autonomous future of transportation.”
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