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The numbers are no longer up for debate: a fully autonomous vehicle driving through a U.S. city is 85% less likely to cause an accident resulting in injuries than a human driver in the same stretch. This is not a future projection. It is the result of 56.7 million miles driven without human intervention, documented in a peer-reviewed study published in Traffic Injury Prevention in May 2025. The relevant question is no longer whether autonomous cars are safer than humans. The question is who will be the first to scale that advantage — and how.
The piece of information that changes everything
The Waymo study —a subsidiary of Alphabet— on its fleet of robotaxis in Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles is the most rigorous safety analysis published to date regarding Level 4 autonomous vehicles (driverless). Its results, compared to equivalent human drivers in the same urban areas, are hard to ignore: –85% in accidents with injuries (0.41 incidents per million miles vs. 2.78 for humans), –57% in accidents reported to the police (2.1 vs. 4.85 per million miles), and –96% in intersection collisions with injuries — the most lethal type of accident in urban environments.
Intersections account for 27% of fatal road accidents according to data from the NHTSA. It is precisely here that human error—distraction, speeding, ignoring traffic signals—claims the most lives. And it is exactly here that the autonomous system demonstrates its greatest advantage: reaction times in milliseconds, 360-degree perception simultaneously, and zero fatigue.
A detail that headlines often overlook: of the 38 serious accidents reported by Waymo between July 2024 and February 2025, only one was clearly attributable to the autonomous system. In 34 of the cases, the Waymo vehicle was stopped at a traffic light when it was struck by another human driver.
U.S.: the open-air laboratory
The U.S. regulatory model is essentially a real-time experiment. Companies deploy, collect data, make corrections, and redeploy. The federal government establishes reporting obligations—since June 2021, any incident involving an autonomous vehicle must be reported to the NHTSA—but does not require prior approval for commercial deployment.
Waymo currently operates over 1,500 vehicles, averaging 250,000 trips per week across five cities. Its expansion includes a partnership with Uber to reach Atlanta and Austin, as well as plans for a launch in London in 2026. The cost of its vehicles—based on the Jaguar I-Pace with high-range sensors—remains high, which limits the speed of scaling.
Tesla occupies a different space: its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving systems are classified as Level 2, meaning driver assistance that requires constant human oversight. However, it accounts for 78.7% of all reported ADAS incidents in the U.S., largely because its volume of vehicles on the road is massively higher than any fleet of robotaxis.
China: the one who climbs the fastest
While Waymo leads in scientific rigor and data transparency, China excels in deployment speed and cost-effectiveness. Baidu Apollo Go has completed over 17 million rides globally and operates in 22 cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi. Its 250,000 weekly driverless rides place it on operational par with Waymo, but with one crucial structural difference: the cost per vehicle.
The sixth generation of Baidu's robotaxi, the RT6, costs less than $30,000 per unit. The seventh generation is expected to be priced below $20,000. Waymo's vehicle costs several times more. This gap makes profitability—the true measure of maturity for any technology—achievable for China much sooner.
In fact, Baidu announced in 2025 that it has achieved profitability per vehicle in Wuhan, a city where it operates its largest fleet with over 1,000 units. It is the world's first profitable robotaxi operation, with fares 30% cheaper than in Beijing or Shanghai.
In terms of safety, Apollo Go reports one airbag deployment for every 10.14 million kilometers traveled without a driver, with no fatalities or serious injuries recorded. The other Chinese players —Pony.ai, WeRide, AutoX— each operate fleets consisting of hundreds of vehicles. Pony.ai was the first company to obtain a license to operate throughout the entire municipality of Shenzhen. The Chinese government has identified autonomous driving as a national strategic technology, with commercial regulations in effect since December 2023 and dozens of cities with licensed pilot zones.
Europe: Caution as Policy
Europe does not deny the data. It is aware of it. The issue is that it applies a different regulatory philosophy: the precautionary principle. Here, it does not deploy to learn; it approves before deploying.
The result is a notable regulatory fragmentation. Each member state has authority over traffic rules and pilot programs, forcing companies to navigate 27 distinct legal frameworks. The Draghi report of 2024 explicitly identified this fragmentation as a structural hindrance to European competitiveness in autonomous mobility. Specifically, the EU limits the approval of autonomous vehicles to a maximum of 1,500 units per model per year. The European Commission planned to remove this limit in July 2024. It did not fulfill that commitment.
There are legitimate technical reasons for caution. European cities present distinct conditions: higher density of cyclists and pedestrians, complex roundabouts, older infrastructure, and inconsistent signage between countries. An autonomous shuttle pilot in Barcelona in 2025 identified interaction with pedestrians as the biggest technical challenge. Models trained in Phoenix or Wuhan are not directly exportable.
Germany is the most advanced exception: it legalized Level 4 driving in 2021 and in December 2025 published the first legal framework for remote teledriving. Spain is still in the public consultation phase. The European Commission's Automotive Action Plan from March 2025 outlines cross-border testing corridors and a European Alliance for Autonomous Vehicles—steps in the right direction, but viewed as delayed.
Conclusion
The outcome of this race will not be determined solely by who has the best technology. It will be determined by who achieves the combination of proven safety, viable cost per vehicle, and a regulatory framework that allows for scaling first. As of 2026, China has the advantage in the last two areas. The U.S. leads in the first.
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