Waymo‘s driverless vehicles were involved in 82% fewer injury-causing crashes than human drivers over more than 270 million miles, the company said on Thursday.
The Alphabet-owned company said its autonomous driving system, the Waymo Driver, was involved in 841 fewer injury-causing crashes than human drivers would have been over the same distance, regardless of fault.
“Across Waymo’s 270 million autonomous miles, the data is unequivocal: at least 841 people avoided injuries they otherwise would have sustained in a traffic crash,” the company said in a media briefing.
Waymo said the 841 figure assumes “a conservative baseline of at least one injured person per crash.”
“Our latest safety data shows the Waymo Driver continues to make roads safer for everyone,” Waymo wrote on X.
The analysis covers fully autonomous operations through the end of June in five metropolitan areas: Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix and San Francisco.
Waymo’s safety impact data hub puts the exact total at 271.3 million rider-only miles.
Phoenix accounted for 92.1 million of those miles, followed by the San Francisco Bay Area with 82.4 million, Los Angeles with 67.1 million, Austin with 21.1 million and Atlanta with 8.6 million.
Serious Crashes Down 95%
The gap widened for more severe collisions.
The Waymo Driver was involved in 95% fewer crashes causing serious injury or worse than human drivers, Waymo said, describing it as 20 times fewer.
That equals 55 fewer serious-injury crashes, according to the data hub, which puts Waymo’s rate at 0.01 incidents per million miles against a human benchmark of 0.21.
The company’s previous update, which covered 220.6 million miles through March, put that reduction at 94%, or 47 fewer serious-injury crashes.
The figure has risen with each update over the past year, from 91% at 96 million miles through June 2025 to 92% in the update Waymo published in March.
The overall injury-crash reduction was unchanged at 82%, up from 707 fewer crashes in the March update.
Crashes in which an airbag deployed in any vehicle were also 82% lower, or 358 fewer, up from 305 fewer in March. The latest dataset adds about 50 million miles in three months.
“Over 300 human lifetimes of driving, the Waymo Driver continues to meaningfully improve road safety,” Waymo said.
Pedestrians, Cyclists and Motorcyclists
Waymo said the largest reductions came in crashes involving the most exposed road users.
Injury-causing crashes involving pedestrians were 93% lower than the human benchmark, unchanged from March, or 86 fewer crashes.
The reduction for cyclists rose to 86% from 84%, or 56 fewer crashes.
For motorcyclists it narrowed to 82% from 84%, or 36 fewer crashes.
“Whether it’s riding in a bike lane alongside the vehicle, stepping into a crosswalk at dusk, or navigating dense traffic on a motorcycle, the Waymo Driver significantly reduces risk,” the company said.
Gaps Vary by City and Crash Type
The reduction in injury-causing crashes ranged from 66% in Los Angeles to 90% in San Francisco, according to the data hub.
Phoenix, Waymo’s largest market by miles, showed a 71% reduction, while Austin and Atlanta came in at 84% and 88%.
Front-to-rear collisions between two vehicles showed the smallest gap of any crash type.
Waymo recorded 88 such injury crashes against a benchmark of 169, a 48% reduction.
At intersections, Waymo had 15 injury crashes against a benchmark of 405, a 96% reduction.
The human benchmark for injury crashes includes a 32% upward adjustment for crashes that go unreported to police, according to the hub’s methodology.
Independent Study
An independent analysis by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, published in July, found Waymo’s driverless cars had 68% fewer police-reportable crashes than human drivers.
The study covered about 50 million Waymo miles between 2021 and 2024 in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Austin, and found 81% fewer injury crashes.
“The results show that, on a limited scale, these driverless cars are safer than human drivers — who can be impaired or drowsy or suffer lapses in attention,” IIHS President David Harkey said in a statement.
IIHS also said the federal crash-reporting system is not good enough to allow continuous monitoring of a large-scale robotaxi expansion.
Recalls and Investigations
The new figures follow a series of software recalls triggered by specific driving scenarios.
Waymo has filed six recalls with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration since February 2024, all fixed through software updates.
Three came in the past 10 months.
The first, in December, covered 3,067 vehicles that could move off before a stopped school bus had switched off its lights or retracted its stop arm.
In May, Waymo recalled 3,791 vehicles after an empty robotaxi drove into floodwater in San Antonio and was swept into a creek.
A month later it recalled 3,871 vehicles after some drove into active freeway construction zones.
NHTSA is still investigating a January crash in which a Waymo struck a 9-year-old near an elementary school in Santa Monica, California, causing minor injuries.
In July, NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison wrote to autonomous vehicle companies, including Waymo, demanding they stop interfering with police, firefighters and paramedics at emergency scenes.
“Emergency scenes are not rare or extreme ‘edge cases’,” Morrison wrote.
In August, a pedestrian in Dallas was killed after being hit by an SUV and thrown into the path of an empty Waymo, according to police. Police did not find the Waymo at fault.
Newer Cities Not Yet Included
The five metropolitan areas in the analysis are Waymo’s longest-running markets.
Cities where Waymo has since started paid service, including Denver, San Diego and Tampa, are not part of the dataset.
Waymo operates a fleet of more than 4,000 vehicles and drives more than 4 million miles a week, according to its latest figures.
Waymo said it updates the analysis in line with the reporting timelines of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Standing General Order on crash reporting.
The company also said the Waymo Driver undergoes a formal safety review before deployment on public roads.
“As our operations scale, so does the positive safety impact the Waymo Driver has on roads, our riders, the communities we serve, and the healthcare ecosystems that serve these communities,” it said.
