We’re going to look at a few high-profile incidents in this article, but it’s worth keeping in mind that these crashes don’t necessarily mean robotaxis are unsafe. These accidents get published all over the media when they happen, but we never write an article about an autonomous taxi completing a journey successfully.
The California DMV, which permitted these vehicles to operate in San Francisco, has the most recent autonomous vehicle crash updates. So far, there have been 690 autonomous vehicle collisions, and reports are readily available. These incidents are primarily minor; in most cases, there is a driver behind the wheel.
We’ll give you an example. Apple filed an accident report for one of its cars on February 15th, 2024. The safety driver disengaged the autonomous system just before running over a piece of metal on the road. Only the vehicle was damaged, and the police didn’t even bother to come out. If you study the 2024 reports submitted by Waymo, Apple, Nuro, Zoox, WeRide, and Ghost Autonomy, you’ll see that 95% of them were caused by human drivers rear-ending a robotaxi.
Approximately 9.1 driverless car crashes occur per million miles driven. The worst drivers in the USA are ages 20 to 28. This age group has 549 collisions per million miles driven.
Sorry, Gen-Z, but it appears the robotaxis are better than you, according to the research. Now, let’s look at real life.
