We've been talking a lot about autonomous vehicles, and in particular Waymo, on this blog. In my opinion, the safety records — which Waymo has published after driving more than 100 million driverless miles — already suggest that none of us should be driving cars anymore. Some or many of you will disagree with this statement, but there's a reason why car crashes are the number two cause of death for children and young adults in the US.

So not only is this a tech breakthrough and a profound city-building shift, but it's also a public health breakthrough. Here's a recent opinion piece published in the New York Times by Dr. Jonathan Slotkin, the vice chair of neurosurgery at the Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania. I found this statement particularly interesting:

In medical research, there’s a practice of ending a study early when the results are too striking to ignore. We stop when there is unexpected harm. We also stop for overwhelming benefit, when a treatment is working so well that it would be unethical to continue giving anyone a placebo. When an intervention works this clearly, you change what you do.

Now the imperative:

There’s a public health imperative to quickly expand the adoption of autonomous vehicles. More than 39,000 Americans died in motor vehicle crashes last year, more than homicide, plane crashes and natural disasters combined. Crashes are the No. 2 cause of death for children and young adults. But death is only part of the story. These crashes are also the leading cause of spinal cord injury. We surgeons see the aftermath of the 10,000 crash victims who come to emergency rooms every day. The combined economic and quality-of-life toll exceeds $1 trillion annually, more than the entire U.S. military or Medicare budget.

Dr. Slotkin goes on to talk about some of the cities that are pushing back against AV adoption, or simply erecting barriers, namely Washington, D.C. and Boston. That's too bad. This is a decision that can be easily guided by data: Which is the safest option for the greatest number of people? Just do that. Dr. Slotkin gets it right: "policymakers need to stop fighting this transformation and start planning for it."

Waymo has started releasing statistics for its autonomous vehicles. Here's the link.

There are a number of important considerations when comparing human-driven and autonomous vehicles. For instance, the two have different definitions of a crash. AV operators have to report any kind of physical contact (property damage, injury, or fatality). Human-driven cars, on the other hand, don't typically report accidents unless it was bad enough to necessitate a police report. So there are nuances to keep in mind.

That said, there is an argument to be made that AVs are already safer than human-driven ones. Through to June 2024, Waymo had already logged over 22 million rider-only miles. And here is what it is now reporting in terms of airbag deployments, injury-causing crashes, and police-reported crashes:

All of them are lower than their respective benchmark crash rates.

We've been talking a lot about autonomous vehicles, and in particular Waymo, on this blog. In my opinion, the safety records — which Waymo has published after driving more than 100 million driverless miles — already suggest that none of us should be driving cars anymore. Some or many of you will disagree with this statement, but there's a reason why car crashes are the number two cause of death for children and young adults in the US.

So not only is this a tech breakthrough and a profound city-building shift, but it's also a public health breakthrough. Here's a recent opinion piece published in the New York Times by Dr. Jonathan Slotkin, the vice chair of neurosurgery at the Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania. I found this statement particularly interesting:

In medical research, there’s a practice of ending a study early when the results are too striking to ignore. We stop when there is unexpected harm. We also stop for overwhelming benefit, when a treatment is working so well that it would be unethical to continue giving anyone a placebo. When an intervention works this clearly, you change what you do.

Now the imperative:

There’s a public health imperative to quickly expand the adoption of autonomous vehicles. More than 39,000 Americans died in motor vehicle crashes last year, more than homicide, plane crashes and natural disasters combined. Crashes are the No. 2 cause of death for children and young adults. But death is only part of the story. These crashes are also the leading cause of spinal cord injury. We surgeons see the aftermath of the 10,000 crash victims who come to emergency rooms every day. The combined economic and quality-of-life toll exceeds $1 trillion annually, more than the entire U.S. military or Medicare budget.

Dr. Slotkin goes on to talk about some of the cities that are pushing back against AV adoption, or simply erecting barriers, namely Washington, D.C. and Boston. That's too bad. This is a decision that can be easily guided by data: Which is the safest option for the greatest number of people? Just do that. Dr. Slotkin gets it right: "policymakers need to stop fighting this transformation and start planning for it."

Waymo has started releasing statistics for its autonomous vehicles. Here's the link.

There are a number of important considerations when comparing human-driven and autonomous vehicles. For instance, the two have different definitions of a crash. AV operators have to report any kind of physical contact (property damage, injury, or fatality). Human-driven cars, on the other hand, don't typically report accidents unless it was bad enough to necessitate a police report. So there are nuances to keep in mind.

That said, there is an argument to be made that AVs are already safer than human-driven ones. Through to June 2024, Waymo had already logged over 22 million rider-only miles. And here is what it is now reporting in terms of airbag deployments, injury-causing crashes, and police-reported crashes:

All of them are lower than their respective benchmark crash rates.