Safety Audit of Waymo Comes to Some Surprising Findings — NOT!

Support CleanTechnica’s work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe.

If there’s one criticism of Waymo’s approach to development of its self-driving taxi business, it’s that Waymo has been slow and boring. (Yes, a certain segment of people — basically, Tesla [NASDAQ:TSLA] investors — have also claimed Waymo’s approach is too sensor-heavy and expensive, but I don’t think that’s proving to be true compared to alternatives and I don’t think it’s a very widespread concern from people following the company.) Waymo has been operating self-driving vehicles on public roads for ages, but it took a long time to expand much, and even to enter a third city. That seems to be because Waymo is so careful in what it does, and so thoroughly methodical.

Waymo recently became the first autonomous driving company to have “complete independent, third-party audits” of its “safety case program” and its “remote assistance program.” The organization auditing it was TÜV SÜD. Reading through the announcement, I started thinking of the exaggerated bureaucrats of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Then I thought of librarians. I know, these seem like ridiculous comparisons for a Silicon Valley company on the edge of new technology, but there’s just something very methodical and careful about how Waymo has proceeded year after year. I don’t mean it as a criticism, even though it may come with some faults and drawbacks. In fact, as the company that led the way on self-driving vehicles on public roads for a long time, it seems highly logical and well planned. Anyway, though, let’s get back to the news and see what you have to say.

“Safety transparency and accountability have always been the foundation of Waymo’s mission to be the world’s most trusted driver. Today, we’re proud to share that Waymo has become the first autonomous driving company to complete independent, third-party audits of both our remote assistance program, which helps provide contextual information to our vehicles, and our safety case program. Conducted over several months by the global leader in safety testing and certification, TÜV SÜD, this rigorous review evaluated each program against industry best practices and standards,” Waymo wrote.

“This audit follows a previous independent evaluation by TÜV SÜD of Waymo’s First Responder program. With more aspects of our safety approach undergoing third-party review and confirmation, Waymo continues to lead the industry in safety and elevate standards for accountability.”

Not sure what a safety case is, or even a remote assistance program? Waymo explains what those are, and I’m afraid of missing some important nuanced element of them, so I’ll just use the company’s own words along with more commentary on the evaluation. Here’s more on the company’s safety case:

“A safety case is a formal way to explain how a company determines its fully autonomous system is safe for public road deployment without a human driver, including evidence to support that determination. Waymo has been a long-time proponent of using a safety case approach as the foundation for autonomous vehicle regulatory frameworks. In 2023, Waymo published its own methodology to help guide the industry on how to build a reliable case for safety.

“Recently, TÜV SÜD audited Waymo’s processes for managing and assessing its safety case program. This audit involved a thorough review of our policy documentation — from the claim creation and evidence identification to operationalization and management of the entire process. Independent implementation checks, including multiple interviews with Waymo team members, also ensured the consistent and effective application of these policies. The audit confirmed that Waymo’s safety case program adheres to all the guidance outlined in the recent AVSC Best Practice for Safety Case Assessment, as well as satisfies the rigorous requirements within the International Standards for Systems and Software Assurance ISO 15026-2. Together, these documents provide the leading industry standards and state of the art for safety case assessment and management.”

The remote assistance program is more intuitive — it’s basically just how Waymo provides support when a customer needs it — but here’s what Waymo has to say about this:

“Waymo’s remote assistance program, referred to as Fleet Response, enables the Waymo Driver to contact a human agent for additional information to help contextualize its surroundings in certain challenging or uncommon situations. It’s important to note that the Waymo Driver does not rely solely on the inputs it receives from the fleet response agent and it is in control of the vehicle at all times, dynamically prioritizing the safest course of action.

“TÜV SÜD conducted a comprehensive review of the program, evaluating the robustness and safety of training and implementation practices, including a multiple-day site visit to observe operations firsthand. The audit confirmed the adherence of Waymo’s policies and practices with the industry best practice on Remote Assistance Use-Cases produced by the AVSC consortium.”

And interesting note there was that Waymo’s self-driving system, Waymo Driver, is still driving the car after getting human assistance. This is something that has been misunderstood and misrepresented repeatedly for years (again, primarily by Tesla [NASDAQ:TSLA] investors from what I have seen).

Did Waymo need to conduct these audits to confirm what many of us assumed, that Waymo had thorough and adequate safety case and remote assistance programs? No, it didn’t, but that gets back to my point at the top. The company keeps going a step or 10 (or 100?) beyond requirements in order to make sure it’s doing things super carefully, super safely, and in a way that it thinks the rest of the industry should do things in order to be responsible and not drive into trouble. Of course, the rest of the industry isn’t following suit. There’s another notable company, now based out of Austin, that is surely not going to go out of its way to voluntarily have these audits done, but then beyond that company, are any other self-driving vehicle startups going to invite auditors in for months to look for problems or ways they could be doing things more carefully? I doubt it!

I think Waymo deserves some kudos for going about things the way it has. But it also feels like now is the time to step on the pedal and expand into as many cities and regions as possible. The technology is clearly ready, and the company has laid a massive foundation to support what it’s doing.