TX: Way past time for Waymo in Dallas

If you’ve had occasion to visit Austin, Phoenix, San Francisco or Los Angeles in recent times, you already know that Dallas is well behind in the arrival of autonomous cars on our streets.

Word that we will finally get Waymo service next year is welcome news. The evidence increasingly shows that well-designed autonomous vehicles are a safer and, ultimately, less expensive way of getting around than having a human behind the wheel.

A November 2024 study published by the National Institutes of Health comparing Waymo’s accident rate to that of human drivers showed an 80% reduction in injury-reported crashes. Waymo’s crash rate in such incidents was 0.6 incidents per 1 million miles traveled versus human drivers who racked up 2.8 crashes per million miles.

The cars aren’t accident free. But as cities across the country increasingly embrace autonomous vehicles, the perfect can’t be the enemy of the good. Reducing overall accidents at such a substantial rate could save lives, hospital visits and insurance costs.

As driverless cars arrive in Dallas, it will be important to think about how they will alter the broader transportation landscape. As autonomy becomes more common, efficiency in both travel and cost should increase.

Will we need as many lane miles of new roads? Will we have to devote as much of our monthly personal budgets to cars and insurance? What about policing traffic? What role will mass public transportation play when the potential for cheap point-to-point private transportation exists?

We are still a long way from there. How long is hard to say, but the time frame appears to be shrinking. Waymo cars are now on the highways in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Phoenix. The fact that they can traverse long distances at high speeds all but ensures they will be on Texas highways soon. Knowing some of the drivers in this part of the world, we wish Waymo luck.

The most likely outcome is that Waymos will perform well broadly and that there will be a number of high-profile incidents that get more attention than an equivalent human driver error would. That could be anything from interfering with an emergency vehicle, to coming to a stop in the middle of the road, to causing an accident that involves injury or death.

The likelihood those outcomes will ever decline to zero seems very low. But they should continue to decline over time, and we will be safer as a result. The most unpredictable variable in any car is the human behind the wheel.

About 40,000 people die in car accidents every year. Most of those deaths are the fault of a human driver who made a bad decision, was speeding or who was distracted or intoxicated.

Right now, Waymo cars often cost more than ride shares with a human driver. That seems unlikely to remain the case as they scale and competition enters the market.

Transportation via autonomous cars should get cheaper, safer and more abundant as time goes on.

That would be good for everyone. So pull up, Waymo. We’re ready to ride.

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