Waymo vs Tesla vs Cruise: The AV Safety Scoreboard

How We Grade

Our safety grades combine multiple factors from the NHTSA SGO database: fatality rate (fatalities as a percentage of incidents, weighted most heavily), injury patterns, autonomy level (ADS vs ADAS — fully autonomous systems carry more responsibility but demonstrate stronger safety records), and operational transparency (how openly a company shares safety data and cooperates with regulators).

This is not a perfect system. Comparing Tesla (a consumer car company selling ADAS to millions) against Waymo (a robotaxi operator running thousands of ADS vehicles in select cities) against Cruise (a defunct robotaxi operation) is inherently an apples-to-oranges comparison. But the public demands a comparison, and these are the best data we have.

Tesla: Grade D

Tesla's grade is dragged down by one overwhelming factor: 56 fatalities. With a fatality rate of 1.74% per incident, Tesla's ADAS systems are significantly more lethal than either competitor. The company's 3,214 incidents span all 50 states and are almost entirely ADAS (Level 2 driver-assist), meaning a human was supposed to be supervising in every case.

Tesla earns some credit for fleet scale — no other company has put driver-assistance technology in the hands of millions of consumers. And Tesla's quarterly safety reports show improving crash rates over time. But the raw fatality count is hard to look past. Fifty-six deaths linked to Autopilot and FSD is 82% of all AV/ADAS fatalities in the national database.

Waymo: Grade A

Waymo earns the highest grade based on an exceptional fatality rate: just 2 deaths from 1,810 incidents, a rate of 0.11%. The company also leads on transparency — publishing detailed safety data through its Safety Impact Dashboard and cooperating with independent safety assessments.

Waymo's high injury count (1,778) looks alarming in isolation but reflects the company's comprehensive reporting of even minor injury claims. Most Waymo "injuries" are from low-speed urban contacts where the other party reports minor discomfort. The company's 100% ADS classification means every mile driven is fully autonomous — no human supervision required or expected.

The grade isn't an A because Waymo still has a substantial incident count and operates in a limited geographic footprint. Proving safety in San Francisco and Phoenix is different from proving it everywhere.

Cruise: Grade A

Cruise's grade reflects a mixed record. The company achieved zero fatalities across 155 incidents — a genuine safety accomplishment for a fully autonomous fleet operating in San Francisco's demanding urban environment. But 150 injuries from 155 incidents gives an injury rate of 97%, suggesting frequent low-speed contacts similar to Waymo's pattern.

Cruise loses points on transparency. The 2023 pedestrian-dragging incident — and Cruise's initial failure to fully disclose the details to California regulators — was a catastrophic transparency failure that ultimately led to the company's shutdown. A company with zero fatalities shouldn't have lost its operating permit, but the cover-up destroyed trust.

The Fundamental Comparison Problem

Grading these three companies together obscures more than it reveals. Tesla operates ADAS on highways where the driver is supposed to be paying attention. Waymo operates ADS on city streets where no driver exists. Cruise operated ADS in San Francisco before shutting down. The use cases, environments, and levels of automation are fundamentally different.

A more meaningful comparison would control for road type, time of day, and weather — but the data doesn't support that level of granularity across all three companies. What we can say definitively: fully autonomous systems (Waymo, Cruise) have dramatically lower fatality rates than driver-assist systems (Tesla), regardless of how you slice the data.

What Would Change the Grades

For Tesla: reducing the fatality count through better Autopilot/FSD performance, or publishing more granular safety data that demonstrates improvement would boost the grade. For Waymo: expanding to more cities and maintaining the low fatality rate at scale would earn an A. For Cruise: the company would need to resume operations and rebuild its transparency record — which seems unlikely given GM's decision to wind down the program.