Waymo returned to Phoenix freeways on July 29 after a 72-day suspension — and chose that same week to describe its autonomous fleet as substantially safer than human drivers, according to its safety impact data. What Waymo did not address in its freeway-return announcement is an independent study released ten days earlier that challenges the benchmark behind that claim. Researchers at the Sam Schwartz Transportation Research Program at Hunter College found that Waymo’s rate of crashes resulting in serious injuries or deaths is 1.5 times higher per million miles than New York City’s professional for-hire vehicle fleet — the Uber and Lyft drivers whose urban market robotaxis are actually built to replace.
In the San Francisco Bay Area — Waymo’s largest and most established urban market — that rate is more than three times higher than the city’s professional for-hire drivers. The study, conducted with advocacy group Open Plans and published July 20, compares Waymo’s own NHTSA filings against data from New York City’s Taxi and Limousine Commission and Department of Transportation dating back to 2020.
Waymo has disputed the methodology. “Any meaningful safety analysis should compare apples-to-apples data, based on best practices. We caution against comparisons that extrapolate Waymo’s safety performance from one place to another,” spokesperson Ethan Teicher said. The company’s standard safety statistic — that it produces 94% fewer serious injury and fatal crashes than human drivers — draws its benchmark from the full population of US drivers, including impaired, distracted, and inexperienced ones…