Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana says society will accept the eventual deaths caused by self-driving cars as part of the cost of innovation. During an onstage interview at TechCrunch’s Disrupt conference in San Francisco, Mawakana admitted that despite years of development, autonomous vehicles will never be perfect and fatal accidents are a matter of “when,” not “if.”
“I think that society will,” Mawakana responded when asked if the public would accept a death caused by a robotaxi. She added that transparency and high safety standards are essential, pointing to Waymo’s public safety data hub as proof of the company’s openness. However, she made it clear that safety does not mean perfection. “We know it’s not perfection,” she said. “We say ‘when.’ And we plan for them.”
Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet, claims its self-driving cars will drastically reduce traffic deaths in the long term. Still, Mawakana acknowledged the company frequently slows down or reverses rollout plans when safety issues arise. One example: their ongoing struggle to ensure robotaxis don’t interfere with emergency response vehicles.
That concern became reality when a Waymo robotaxi recently ignored San Francisco firefighters battling a blaze and nearly ran over an active fire hose. Police bodycam footage showed officers scrambling to stop the vehicle. “It doesn’t know what to do!” one officer yelled as the car slowly approached the water line. “I don’t trust this AI,” another officer told dispatch.
Waymo eventually intervened remotely, but the incident added to public skepticism surrounding the safety of driverless cars operating in dense cities.
Without naming names, Mawakana criticized rivals like Tesla and Cruise for failing to meet safety and transparency standards. “If you are not being transparent, then it is my view that you are not doing what is necessary in order to actually earn the right to make the roads safer,” she said.
Waymo’s comments and recent incidents are likely to intensify debates over whether self-driving vehicles can be safely deployed at scale — and whether Americans are truly ready to pay the ultimate price for AI on the road.
