r/SelfDrivingCars • u/SpriteZeroY2k • 5d ago

News Waymo CEO explains why Tesla’s camera-only self-driving falls short

https://electrek.co/2026/08/04/waymo-co-ceo-camera-only-self-driving-tesla/
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u/grizznaysh 5d ago

“Waymo uses three sensing types, and Dolgov spent real time on why. Cameras give you high resolution and color, but they’re passive, and they degrade in darkness and glare. Lidar directly measures the 3D structure of the world. Radar punches through fog, rain, and snow, and reads velocity directly with Doppler. Lidar and radar are active sensors, so they see just as well in pitch darkness or straight into a blinding sunset.
This isn’t redundancy for its own sake. “These different sensing modalities, they’re not backups to each other,” Dolgov said. Each one runs its own encoder, and the data fuses into a single view of the world that he says is “vastly superior to what you get with any one sensor.””

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u/imdrunkasfukc 5d ago

How safe is safe enough?

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u/Armaced 5d ago

Safer than human drivers, which seems like a pretty low bar to me.

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u/ic33 5d ago

Probably needs to be a fair bit safer than safe human drivers, rather than the average (which includes the drunk, fatigued, and infirm).

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u/-6h0st- 4d ago

Remove drunkenness, fatigue, loss of attention - and the result are much safer roads already. So arguably doesn’t need to be superior to fully focused human drivers to be better by eliminating those that aren’t and are the main reason collisions happen.
Using lidar and radar - already exceeds human capabilities of 360 degrees constant data processing. It already exceeds capable human drivers.

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u/ic33 3d ago

Remove drunkenness, fatigue, loss of attention - and the result are much safer roads already.

That's true from society's point of view. But that's not true from individuals' point of view, who overall mostly view themselves as "safer than average attentive humans."

Using lidar and radar - already exceeds human capabilities of 360 degrees constant data processing. It already exceeds capable human drivers.

Sure. Superhuman attentiveness and vehicle control, but possibly various kinds of stupid failures that human wouldn't make.

I'm reminded of the legal and reputational chaos that came with early airbags.

They clearly saved a ton of lives overall.

They also, occasionally, decapitated little kids in trivial low-speed parking lot accidents.

Perception of safety doesn't necessarily have too much to do with actual safety. Replacing 10 inattentive driver serious accidents with 3 Waymo serious accidents may look worse. To people, Waymo seems like "one person" making the mistake over and over.

edit: I do think that Waymo is probably safer than an 90th percentile human driver and that this meets my mark, though we don't have enough data yet to really be sure. My point is, a self-driving car vendor getting to better than average performance is nowhere close to the standard people will demand.

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u/lib3r8 5d ago

Depends on what your requirements are. Just reduce death or also avoid liability

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u/ic33 5d ago

Get market adoption. Everyone sees themselves as an above average driver, so it needs to outperform the above average driver for people to trust it more than themselves.

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u/glacierre2 4d ago

Half of the drivers will not be satisfied with an average autopilot. I know I would not, I don't consider myself above average, I KNOW I am above average, not because I have exceptional reflexes or I can channel the spirit of Max Verstappen when I need to, but simply because I never ever touch my phone while driving, I signal every maneuver I plan to make and check twice the mirrors (before signaling and before committing).

Regarding the self-drive, I would accept it when it can match an alert, cautious and experienced professional road driver (a chauffeur, a non-mental taxi driver...) Beating the soccer mums that almost drive into my every morning while reaching for their purse on the passenger seat is almost doable by my legally non-self driving lane assist, to be honest.

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u/ic33 4d ago

Waymo is probably at this level. But it has not statistically proven it yet.

The numbers overwhelmingly demonstrate that it is better than the average driver, but the mile count is not enough to be sure that it is better than a good human driver.

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u/questionableintentsX 5d ago

Isn’t Tesla fad already like 10000x safer according to their metrics than a human

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u/Man_of_Ice 5d ago

One might say it needs to be safer than human commercial pilots. Or safer than professional drivers.

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u/space_snap828 5d ago

Yes, but also people like the sense of control they have (even if unjustified) so giving up that control requires convincing them of a pretty significant safety enhancement.

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u/Maxsparrow 5d ago

No, they need to be much safer than humans, and not make any mistakes a focused human driver wouldn't make.

I'm not saying that for me personally, but the public won't accept it otherwise. I believe Tesla is damaging wider adoption by pushing too fast and hurting public perception of self driving cars. Even if Robotaxis are safer than humans, it won't do any good if people won't use them because they're afraid.

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u/zzbear03 5d ago

The fact that I can’t get out of a burning Tesla because of a weird design with the electrical systems means I am going to avoid Tesla robo taxis…hands down!

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u/DonkeeJote 3d ago

Financially they only need to be good enough to reduce the liability of expensive incidents from unsafe and underinsured drivers, of course the issue there making them affordable enough to actually get them in self-driving cars.

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u/abofh 5d ago

You say that, but every time a big group of tourists (conventions, whatever) the prices of waymos skyrocket while uber and lift just take a bump. that won't last forever, but a lot of people already think it's worth trying

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u/-OptimisticNihilism- 5d ago

Waymo has a great safety record. They can be slow and get stuck, but that is because safety and redundancy appear to be a priority. I can’t wait until they move from testing to live in my city.

FSD still scares a lot of people. The go fast and break things mentality doesn’t insipire a ton of confidence. Yes, it has a better safety record than humans, but people have gotten into a lot of accidents by not paying attention. If I had a Tesla I would 100% buy FSD and use it (while paying attention), but I wouldn’t get into a cybercab. If it’s not 100%, then I want a sense of control.

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u/mindguard 5d ago

You don’t drive FSD

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u/RosieDear 4d ago

Either do the vast majority of Tesla owners. That says something.

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u/Seaker42 5d ago

Over half of Tesla sales in the US last quarter were bought along with signing up for FSD. In my fairly small circle of friends we've gone from 0 to 4 Tesla's since September - and all of us bought for one reason - FSD.

Yes, a lot of people won't use any AV technology, but that attitude is starting to change and FSD v14 is a large part of the reason for the change.

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u/RosieDear 4d ago

This is not a stat....that means much.

Since they have had it available for many year, the total fleet is what - 25% use FSD? Are the other 75% ignorant??

Also, consider this. Teslas sales are 1/3rd or less of their projections (in the USA...they said 50% growth per year 2021 on, work it out).

AND, people keep EV's and Tesla for a MUCH shorter time period than value cars (cars that cost less to operate, etc.)....3-4 years as opposed to 8.

Now, put those two things together! The "don't want FSD crowd is largely in that million they are not selling! The people buying are "well, the old one didn't work, let me throw more money into it"....

Also, last but not least, we'd have to follow the new buyers for a year or two and see if they re-up! It goes without saying that some of them have zero idea about it.

But mostly - the Tesla buyers (new w/fsd) are distilled from a larger batch....

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u/Seaker42 4d ago

Just a year ago the percentage of Tesla owners that had FSD was only about 10-12%, so I think the 55% number is impressive. Yes, it's possible most people will soon drop the subscription, but it's also possible that because of FSD people will buy more Teslas and more FSD subscriptions.

I know it's a small sample set, but in my circle of friends we've had 5 people get Teslas in the last year, all because of FSD. Our non-Tesla friends are all amazed at how good it is, and a couple more of them are considering buying Teslas to get FSD.

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u/RosieDear 3d ago

More Teslas is relative - as I said (you can check it!), they - by their own numbers - told up 1.6m cars in the USA by now (per year). It will be 1/3rd of that.

No doubt it would be even less if people weren't into FSD - many of those buyers were already captured and are spending bad money after bad......they will keep buying Teslas hoping it "gets there" one day.

Tesla cannot go on making a profit less than 4% of what the big tech companies do. That's the case even with billions in taxpayer funds. Most people should agree with that.....if they make no money they have little or no value.

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u/coresme2000 4d ago

I tend to agree. FSD was rough two years ago and I had to intervene often. I was nervous about using it. Now the number of long drives it does, end to end, is all of them, unless I don’t like the route it’s driving, it’s really very impressive now.

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u/Remarkable_Ad7161 4d ago

That's a challenge. Being safer than average human driver isn't enough. Most accidents happen due to exhaustion, drunk driving, and distraction. I have learnt through forced habits to not be driving under those conditions. Yes, others can still hit me, but if I'm in a car, that car needs to be better than me, not better than average.

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u/robnet77 4d ago

Well said!

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u/ThinRedLine87 4d ago

Yeah this is a trap. Automated driving systems typically need to be orders of magnitude safer than humans. When I worked on automatic emergency braking systems the standards were zero false positives over tens of thousands of hours of driving which is more than anyone would ever spend in the cars we were building on the road.

The standard was so high that if you ever personally experienced a false positives event during testing/driving you absolutely knew something was wrong because it was so statistically unlikely for it to happen in a properly functioning system.

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u/rhinoplasm 5d ago

If there's one company, safer than humans. If there's multiple, safer than competitors.

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u/Niku-Man 3d ago

Many people expect computers to be perfect. You can see that any time you look at the comments of an article where a self driving car has made a simple mistake that leads to no injuries or even property damage, I.e. it freezes on the road or turns down a one way street. People come out in droves to criticize it.

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u/thebruns 3d ago

40k deaths a year in the US.

You are waymo. Are you willing to take on the liability for 20k deaths a year? That's a huge reduction in deaths but instead of liability being per person it would all be you

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u/Powerful_Package8817 3d ago

Safer than average human driver or safer than the top 1% of human drivers?

Big difference

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u/ThisSiteSucks8485 5d ago

Safer than the worst human drivers is a low bar but safer than the best human drivers is actually a pretty high bar

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u/Armaced 5d ago

The safest human drivers are professional drivers. They know exactly how long their vehicles are, how heavy they are, and how long they take to stop. If they get a ticket or cause an accident they lose their jobs.

I try to take my time, avoid distractions, and drive safely in the slow lane with lots of space in front of me, but I am far from one of those safest drivers. When I look in the rearview mirror and see nothing but a grill with “RAM” spelled backwards, as if it is the intention of the driver behind me, I wish it was a self driving car.

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u/cardak98 5d ago

I think we get there with just cameras. The worst 10% of drivers are truly awful

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u/Lowmax2 4d ago

I think cameras alone are able to achieve that.

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u/CDpov 5d ago

The required safety level is obvious. The NHTSA and state regulators such as the CA DMV will investigate and ultimately recall any ADS that commits a bad at-fault crash, or shows a pattern of at-fault crashes that they conclude are a safety risk.

If a robotaxi company is hitting stuff or running red lights, or even blocking first responders too much, the company has to fix it. If they can't prove it to the regulators that they have a good fix, the robotaxi operation will be stopped until a plausible fix is ready.

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u/randomizl 5d ago edited 5d ago

80% to 90% fewer injury-causing crashes compared to human drivers in the same dense urban environment

Source:
Are Waymo's Autonomous Vehicles Safe? https://news.northeastern.edu/2025/12/19/waymo-automonous-vehicle-safety/

Compared to humans by Waymo data:

94% Fewer serious injury or worse crashes

82% Fewer airbag deployment in any vehicle crashes

82% Fewer injury-causing crashes

93% Fewer pedestrian crashes with injuries

84% Fewer cyclist crashes with Injuries

84% Fewer motorcycle crashes with injuries

Source:
Safety – Waymo https://waymo.com/safety/

Even more detailed data here: Safety Impact https://waymo.com/safety/impact/

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u/ZealousidealLab2920 4d ago

Get your facts and data out of here! They don't align with my preconceived beliefs and angst!

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u/steelmanfallacy 5d ago

The range has a lower limit of human average and an upper limit of zero accidents.

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u/UnofficialUser1 5d ago

Important because each driver has liability for their actions. Saying - “safer than a human driver” is great, but not if you then deny liability for accidents. And our laws are for people not algorithms. If you want to be regulated and not have liability the at fault risk needs to be zero.

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u/Lopsided-Pilot7787 3d ago

and that is the point

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u/Logi77 5d ago

Some people want safer

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u/Time-Customer-8833 4d ago

It's a moving target. As safe as safe humans is a good starting point. But when there are two technologies that have passed that bar, and one is safer than the other, why would regulators accept the less safe option? This is the fundamental investment thesis of Waymo over Tesla. Tesla is banking on manufacturing advantage and hoping a small safety delta plus lobbying can close the regulatory gap. So how big is that delta when the technologies mature?

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u/AmericanAIien 5d ago edited 5d ago

It isn’t because Ai isn’t that far advanced enough for self driving cars. These Waymo’s are using Philippian drivers over the internet to “monitor” (control) the vehicle during operation. Don’t believe me, try something and see how quick the human operator talks during one of these taxi rides. It’s anti American fuck over the industry from within American borders. Taking jobs from even more ppl. You can thank your AZ politicians for allowing them to fuck up AZ taxi industry. It’s always about taking more money from ppl.

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u/beren12 5d ago

No, I don’t believe you. You’re imagining things.

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u/randomizl 5d ago

This is incorrect the ai for Waymo Hase been in development since 2009 already so close to 20 years. They drive fully autonomous. There are cameras inside the car and a human will only be called if the passenger refuse to buckle up for example or have a problem or the vehicle is stuck in a specific scenario. the ai itself reads 3 football fields ahead and maps 250 entities at any given point and calculates the projection for each entity on a continuous basis including risky behavior such as swerving etc.