Waymo co-CEO Takedra Mawakana said in an interview at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 that he believes other companies working on self-driving cars also need to do more to prove their technology is safe.
Mawakana had just been asked in an interview Monday who she thought would be on the list of companies trying to make roads safer.
“We don’t know who’s on that list because they don’t tell us what’s going on with their fleets,” she said.
Prioritizing safety while scaling the business was a big topic in the interview, and Mawakana made sure to cite recently released data from Waymo showing that its vehicles are five times safer than human drivers and 12 times safer for pedestrians.
Mawakana declined to say whether he was referring specifically to Tesla, but there are currently only a few companies in the United States that claim to be working on robotaxi technology.
Tesla issues a quarterly Vehicle Safety Report. But that data focuses only on the use of the company’s Autopilot driver-assistance technology, which is intended for use on highways, where crash rates are lower than on roads. (And the latest report shows crashes are on the rise.) Tesla has not released public safety data from its nascent robotaxi pilot program in Austin, Texas.
Other companies in this space are in the early stages of adoption or are still testing the technology. Zoox just started offering dedicated AV rides in Las Vegas, Nevada. While companies like May Mobility and Pony AI have yet to launch commercially in the U.S., self-driving truck company Aurora has released a safety framework.
“If you’re going to put a car on the road, take the driver off the wheel, and have someone in another room watching who can take over the vehicle, I think you have a responsibility. You have an obligation to be transparent about what’s going on,” she said. “And my view is that if you’re not being transparent, you’re not doing what you need to do to actually earn the right to make our roads safe.”
