News Summary

• Once you adjust for that, Waymo and Cruise seem to have been involved in low-stakes crashes at similar rates.For example, Cruise vehicles got rear-ended 17 times over about 4 million miles, while Waymo vehicles got rear-ended seven times over roughly 2 million miles.
• Most of these crashes occurred during Cruise’s first million miles, so Cruise may be getting better at handling these situations.It’s important to note that Cruise has logged more than four million miles in San Francisco, so Cruise’s crash reports represent roughly twice as many miles as Waymo’s.
• That includes a lot of minor crashes that wouldn’t be reported to police.Based on this data, Cruise claimed that over its first million miles, its vehicles crashed 56 percent less often per mile than a typical human driver.
• Still, it’s interesting that over two million miles of driverless operation, no Waymo AVs got hit by cars running red lights or bicycles running stop signs.Again, this may be partly because Cruise has driven more miles—and especially more miles in San Francisco.
• Waymo and Cruise have driven a combined total of 8 million driverless miles (a Waymo spokeswoman told me the company has completed more than 4 million driverless miles, and Cruise has said the same).
• Not only do Waymo’s vehicles follow the letter of the law (like stopping at red lights), they may also try to anticipate and avoid dangerous situations (like vehicles running red lights).Cruise vehicles do not seem especially cautious about intersections.