Waymo data shows big crash reductions as cities stay cautious

New figures suggest fewer injuries with Waymo’s driverless cars, but gaps in reporting keep regulators wary.

Waymo has released updated safety data showing that its fully driverless fleet logged 271 million miles through June 2026 across five US metro areas, reporting far lower crash and injury rates than human drivers. The company claims driverless operations have yielded an 82% reduction in injury-causing crashes overall and a 95% drop in crashes causing serious injury or worse, with large reductions in injury crashes involving pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists. Waymo is now operating nearly 4,000 vehicles in more than 10 US cities, driving around 2 million autonomous miles and providing over 500,000 paid rides each week. An Insurance Institute for Highway Safety study independently estimated that, per mile traveled, Waymo’s driverless vehicles have 68% fewer crashes than human-driven vehicles, while cautioning that today’s data collection frameworks are not yet adequate for monitoring large-scale AV rollout. Regulators and safety researchers still question the reliance on self-reported metrics, the lack of uniform reporting standards, and whether aggregate dashboards obscure edge cases and non-crash disruptions, even as cities like New York and Washington, DC continue to resist deployments over traffic and labor concerns.