A deadly, multi-car collision in San Francisco on Sunday evening has marked the first time in the US that a truly autonomous vehicle, with no one in the driver’s seat, has been involved in a fatal collision, according to federal transportation records. The Waymo vehicle involced in the incident was entirely blameless, however.
The self-driving Waymo car was among six vehicles struck when a fast-moving vehicle slammed into a line of car stopped at a traffic light at the corner of 6th and Harrison Streets, about a mile south of the city’s famed Union Square, according to NBC.
While the Waymo was empty, a passenger in one of the other struck vehicles and a dog were killed. Several others also suffered injuries, according to the San Francisco Police Department.
“An unoccupied Waymo vehicle operating autonomously was in a line of stand-still traffic when it was struck from behind by a vehicle that was impacted by another vehicle traveling at an extreme rate of speed,” a Waymo spokesperson wrote in a statement. “The trust and safety of our community remain our top priority, and we are coordinating with local safety officials.”
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration requires self-driving car companies, like Waymo, to report each time their vehicles are involved in an accident, regardless of whether the autonomous vehicle was at fault. According to NHTSA, which began collecting such data in July 2021, Waymo’s driverless vehicles have been involved in about 30 different collisions resulting in some type of injury. Waymo, however, has noted that nearly all those crashes, like Sunday’s collision, were the fault of other cars driven by humans. While NHTSA’s crash data doesn’t note whether self-driving vehicles may have been to blame, Waymo has previously noted that it only expects to pay out insurance liability claims for two previous collisions involving its driverless vehicles that resulted in injuries.
In December, Waymo touted the findings of its latest safety analysis, which determined its fleet of driverless cars continue to outperform human drivers across major safety metrics. The report, authored by Waymo and its partners at the Swiss Reinsurance Company, reviewed insurance claim data to explore how often human drivers and autonomous vehicles are found to be liable in car collisions. According to the study, Waymo’s self-driving vehicles faced about 90% fewer insurance claims relating to property damage and bodily injuries compared to human drivers.
