I’m over two months late to seeing this study, but a brilliant study design (use insurance data to measure rate of bodily injury and property damage) and strong, noteworthy conclusion (doesn’t matter how you cut it, Waymo’s autonomous vehicle service resulted in fewer injuries per mile and less property damage per mile than human drivers in the same area) make this worthwhile to return to! Short and sweet paper from researchers from Waymo, Swiss Re (the re-insurer), and Stanford that is well worth the 10 minute read!
When TO and RO datasets were combined, totaling 39,096,826 miles, there was a significant reduction in bodily injury claims frequency by 93% (0.08 vs 1.09 claims per million miles), TO+ROBI 95% CI [0.02, 0.22], Baseline 95% CI [1.08, 1.09]. Property damage claims frequency was significantly reduced by 93% (0.23 vs 3.17 claims per million miles), TO+ROPDL 95% CI [0.11, 0.44], Baseline 95% CI [3.16,
3.18].
