GM's Cruise Says Its Self-Driving Cars Beat Humans — And Has The Data To Prove It

General Motors Co‘s GM autonomous vehicle subsidiary, Cruise, asserts that its self-driving cars outperform humans, despite a plethora of reports about the vehicles bringing traffic to a standstill.

What Happened: CEO Kyle Vogt said Cruise’s autonomous vehicles were involved in 65% fewer collisions compared to ride-hail drivers in San Francisco. Additionally, they experienced 74% fewer collisions with a significant risk of injury.

These statistics are based on a comparison with a “human ride-hail benchmark,” a standard established by researchers at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute in collaboration with General Motors and the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute.

The research analyzed 5.6 million miles of human ride-hail driving data in San Francisco from 2016 to 2018 to establish this benchmark. According to Cruise’s blog, the benchmark for the human ride-hail crash rate in San Francisco is 64.9 crashes per million miles.

Cruise stated on its blog, “As we continue to accumulate driverless miles and provide updates on our driverless safety record, we want to establish a meaningful and reasonable human benchmark for measuring our safety performance. This study represents the best available benchmark for evaluating human driving performance in a densely populated urban environment.”

Why It’s Important: This study challenges the prevailing concerns and criticisms surrounding autonomous vehicles and their expansion. Last month, both Cruise and Alphabet Inc‘s GOOG GOOGL self-driving technology unit, Waymo, received permits for 24/7 fare-based autonomous operations in San Francisco.

This was despite resistance from several quarters, including the police and fire departments, together with several residents who opposed scaling autonomous vehicles, citing undue interference and unpredictable driving.

Several reports have emerged where Cruise vehicles interrupted emergency responders or caused traffic hold-ups. In one instance, a Cruise vehicle even got stuck in wet concrete.

However, less than two weeks later, the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) directed Cruise to remove 50% of its operational autonomous vehicles from the roads after one of its self-driving cars collided with an emergency vehicle.

This was despite resistance from several quarters, including the police and fire departments, together with several residents who opposed scaling autonomous vehicles, citing undue interference and unpredictable driving.

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