Myth: Robotaxis will never be safe enough

False. Waymo’s taxi service, which reached 1 million rider-only miles driven in January 2023, released statistics that showed no reported injuries up to that point.

All indications are that autonomous driving systems, which do not speed or get distracted, will be safer than human drivers, who cause more than 1.5 million fatal accidents per year. Read more about how Waymo's taxis service reached 1 million rider-only miles in 2023.

Explore the evidence

• Autonomous vehicles will be safer than human drivers, leading to a decrease in road traffic accidents. In 2015, 1.25 million people died from road traffic accidents globally, according to the World Health Organization. Moreover, every year up to 50 million people suffer from non-fatal injuries, which impact quality of life and incur economic costs in the aftermath of a road traffic crash. Learn more about this phenomenon on p53 of our Rethinking Transportation report

• If everyone drove a car with autopilot, we would save 900,000 lives globally every year. As described by RethinkX co-founder Tony Seba in our YouTube Series The Great Disruption.

• Tesla's autopilot autonomous electric vehicle (A-EV) is 8.9 times safer. Watch RethinkX co-founder Tony Seba describe this in more detail.
• Read more about liability, injury and vehicle damage on p62 of our Rethinking Transportation report.
• Read the Tesloop case study on p20-21 of our report Rethinking Transportation to learn about Tesloop, the California-based Robotaxi company offering a low-cost alternative to both short-haul aviation and long-distance Transport-as-a-Service (TaaS) drives and their solution to the Level 5 A-EV dilemma. As they state "Beyond the specific cost structure advantages, there is something more profound happening here. When you take away 99% of accident risk, it changes the scalability of TaaS."
• According to an NHTSA report, Tesla's crash rates decreased by 40% after it introduced its autopilot capability in 2015. (Hawkins, A. 2017. Tesla’s Crash Rate Dropped 40 Percent After Autopilot Was Installed, Feds Say. The Verge, January 19. Retrieved from here.)

Witness the transformation

The disruption of transportation by robotaxis and Transport as a service (TaaS) is inevitable. These technologies are cheaper, more efficient and safer. 

Learn more about the disruption and transformation of the transportation sector.

Published on: 12/07/23