Summary
Waymo says its autonomous vehicles were involved in 82% fewer injury-causing crashes than human-driver benchmarks across more than 270 million miles in five US cities. The company estimates that 841 injury-causing crashes were prevented.
Waymo says its autonomous-driving system was involved in 82% fewer injury-causing crashes than human-driver benchmarks across more than 270 million miles of fully autonomous operation. The company’s analysis covers Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix and San Francisco, through the end of June 2026.
What Waymo’s analysis reports
Across the five cities, Waymo counted 841 fewer injury-causing crashes involving its vehicles than in the human-driver comparison, regardless of who was at fault. The company describes those as an estimated 841 crashes prevented. Its estimate of at least 841 people avoiding injury assumes at least one injured person per prevented crash.
For more severe collisions, Waymo reports 95% fewer crashes resulting in serious injury or worse than among human drivers. It also reports reductions in injury-causing crashes involving pedestrians (93%), cyclists (86%) and motorcyclists (82%). These are company-reported comparisons, not counts of injuries observed in a controlled trial.
The mileage total refers to fully autonomous operations, and the analysis spans five metropolitan service areas. The figures therefore describe Waymo’s reported performance in those places and over that accumulated driving distance; they are not a result for every road or operating condition.
Waymo links to its full data and methodology, but the announcement itself does not explain how the human-driver benchmark was constructed. That comparison method is important to interpreting the reported percentages. Even so, the results give a measure of the company’s claimed safety performance at substantial real-world operating scale, including crashes involving people outside the vehicle.