Tesla has published the most detailed look at the performance and relative safety of its advanced driver-assistance software, just a few weeks after Waymo’s co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana at TechCrunch Disrupt called on companies to release more data.
On a new section of its website, Tesla claims that in North America, owners using the company’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software are driving around 5 million miles before a major collision and around 1.5 million miles before a minor collision.
That’s a far lower rate than the national average based on statistics provided by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). That data shows people get in a major collision every 699,000 miles, and a minor one every 229,000, at least according to Tesla’s interpretation.
Tesla has been releasing “vehicle safety reports” on a quarter-by-quarter basis for a while. But those reports have been repeatedly panned for being insufficient. And Tesla has released almost no information about the safety performance of the Robotaxi trial it’s been running in Austin, Texas, this year, which still has employees in the driver’s seat monitoring for safety reasons.
Waymo, the leading robotaxi company in the U.S. at the moment based on cars deployed and customers served, has published detailed data showing its vehicles are around 5x safer than human drivers, and 12x safer with respect to pedestrians. At last month’s Disrupt conference, Mawakana was asked to name other companies she felt were making roads safer.
“I don’t know who’s on that list, because they’re not telling us what’s happening with their fleets,” said Mawakana, without naming Tesla.
“I think there is a responsibility, if you’re going to put vehicles on the road, and you’re going to remove the driver from behind the wheel, and you’re going to have someone in some other room observing the fleet who can take over their vehicles, it is incumbent upon you to be transparent about what’s happening,” she added. “And if you are not being transparent, then it is my view that you are not doing what is necessary in order to actually earn the right to make the road safer.”
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Waymo didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Friday about whether Mawakana believes Tesla’s new data …