Our latest analysis of the Waymo Driver’s safety performance now covers more than 220 million fully autonomous miles through the end of March 2026 — the equivalent of over 250 human lifetimes behind the wheel. We’ve analyzed five of our operating geographies, including Atlanta for the first time.
Our safety performance remains strong. Compared to human drivers in the same areas over the same period, the Waymo Driver was involved in 94% fewer crashes causing serious or fatal injuries, 82% fewer crashes in which an airbag deployed, and 82% fewer crashes involving any reported injury. Each comparison is made regardless of who was at fault in a collision.
This strong safety performance extends to the most vulnerable people on the road: Waymo experienced 93% fewer injury-causing crashes involving pedestrians, 84% fewer involving cyclists, and 84% fewer involving motorcyclists.
What stands out in this latest update is consistency of safety performance. Since our last analysis, we unified our San Francisco Bay Area service area, expanded into more complex environments including airport service, and reached statistical significance in Atlanta, with its own road layouts and traffic patterns. The operating environment changed substantially, but the safety performance remained robust.
Atlanta is a clear illustration. Across more than 5.4 million fully autonomous miles there, the Waymo Driver was involved in 94% fewer airbag-deployment crashes and 86% fewer injury-involving crashes than the human benchmark — both statistically significant. A typical driver covering those same miles in Atlanta would have been expected to be involved in roughly 1.2 crashes causing serious or fatal injuries. The Waymo Driver was involved in none.
These percentages describe a rate, but what they add up to is people. Waymo now drives more than 4 million miles every week. That translates to an estimated one fewer serious-injury-or-worse crash every eight days, and roughly six fewer airbag-deployment crashes and thirteen fewer crashes that cause any kinds of injuries each week.
Over the lifetime of our operations, these safety benefits accumulate for our riders and the communities we serve. Waymo has experienced an estimated 47 fewer crashes causing serious or fatal injuries, 306 fewer crashes that led to the deployment of an airbag in any involved vehicle, and 707 fear crashes causing injuries of any kinds than would be expected had those miles been driven by humans in the same places. As the Waymo Driver drives more miles, those totals keep growing.
Carol Flannagan, Research Professor at UMTRI said: “Waymo has reached the point where it is driving enough miles to make direct comparisons to human drivers on crash rates. The consistency of the results across locations helps support the strength of the conclusions, and their methods give significant attention to the challenges of making apples-to-apples comparisons when the data sources for humans and the Waymo vehicle are different. The focused results at intersections are particularly positive because intersections remain a significant safety challenge, especially for vulnerable road users.”
View the full data and methodology here. The Waymo Driver also undergoes a formal safety review before deployment on public roads. You can see the acceptance criteria used to evaluate its readiness in this paper.