Society Will Accept a Death Caused By a Robotaxi, Waymo Co-CEO Says

At TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said society will ultimately accept a fatal robotaxi crash as part of the broader tradeoff for safer roads overall. TechCrunch reports: The topic of a fatal robotaxi crash came up during Mawakana's interview with Kristen Korosec, TechCrunch's transportation editor, during the first day of the outlet's annual Disrupt conference in San Francisco. Korosec asked Mawakana about Waymo's ambitions and got answer after answer about the company's all-consuming focus on safety. The most interesting part of the interview arrived when Korosec brought on a thought experiment. What if self-driving vehicles like Waymo and others reduce the number of traffic fatalities in the United States, but a self-driving vehicle does eventually cause a fatal crash, Korosec pondered. Or as she put it to the executive: 'Will society accept that? Will society accept a death potentially caused by a robot?'

'I think that society will,' Mawakana answered, slowly, before positioning the question as an industrywide issue. 'I think the challenge for us is making sure that society has a high enough bar on safety that companies are held to.' She said that companies should be transparent about their records by publishing data about how many crashes they're involved in, and she pointed to the 'hub' of safety information on Waymo's website. Self-driving cars will dramatically reduce crashes, Mawakana said, but not by 100%: 'We have to be in this open and honest dialogue about the fact that we know it's not perfection.'

Circling back to the idea of a fatal crash, she said, 'We really worry as a company about those days. You know, we don't say 'whether.' We say 'when.' And we plan for them.' Korosec followed up, asking if there had been safety issues that prompted Waymo to 'pump the breaks' on its expansion plans throughout the years. The co-CEO said the company pulls back and retests 'all the time,' pointing to challenges with blocking emergency vehicles as an example. 'We need to make sure that the performance is backing what we're saying we're doing,' she said. '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,' Mawakana said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.