Jack Stilgoe, a science and technology professor at University College London, says that Waymo and other self-driving technologies would struggle to pass a traditional human driving test—not necessarily because they can’t drive, but because the test is not designed for them. And Waymo’s callout to the millions of miles driven without incident is a highlight of that disparity. Cruise did something similar last year, publishing research in collaboration with two universities that suggested self-driving cars it operated had less than half the number of crashes per million miles driven than human rideshare drivers.
Stilgoe argues that such a claim manages to couch what may be a bigger issue. “With driving, it’s not the total number of miles that matters,” he says. “It’s what happens in the tiny minority of circumstances where you’re called upon to make a difficult decision. That’s where safety is defined.”