Robotaxi companies must do more to prove safety, Waymo co-CEO says

Waymo co-CEO Takedra Mawakana believes other companies working on autonomous vehicles need to do more to prove their technology is safe, he said in an interview. TechCrunch Disrupt 2025.

Mwakana was just asked who he thought was on the list of organizations trying to make the roads safer during an interview Monday.

“I don’t know who’s on that list, because they’re not telling us what’s going on with their fleet,” he said.

Prioritizing safety during the scaling operation was a big issue during the interview and Mwakana was sure Information Waymo recently released It shows by its calculations that the company’s vehicles are five times safer than human drivers and 12 times safer than pedestrians.

Mawakana declined to say whether he was talking specifically about Tesla, but only a handful of companies in the U.S. claim to be working on robotaxi technology right now.

Tesla reveals Quarterly “Vehicle Safety Report.” But that data focuses only on the use of the company’s Autopilot driver assistance technology, which is designed for use on highways, where accident rates are lower than on surface roads. (And Latest reports show an uptick in crashes.) Tesla has not released any public data about the safety of its new robotaxi pilot program in Austin, Texas.

Other companies in the space are in the deployment phase or are still testing their technology. Zoox has just begun offering rides in its purpose-built AV in Las Vegas, Nevada. Companies like May Mobility and Pony AI have yet to launch commercially in the U.S. Aurora, the self-driving truck company, A security framework is exposed.

“I think there’s 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 monitoring the fleet in some other room who can occupy their vehicles, then it’s your responsibility to be transparent about what’s going on.” “And if you’re not transparent, it’s my view that you’re not doing what’s necessary to earn the right to make the road safer.”