Waymo's Collision Avoidance Testing: Evaluating our Driver’s Ability to Avoid Crashes Compared to Humans

It’s happened to almost every driver: that terrifying moment when you have to urgently brake or swerve to avoid a collision caused by other road users’ behavior. Like a human driver, the Waymo Driver encounters potential hazards — from a vehicle running a red light to a car suddenly changing lanes. To evaluate our Driver’s ability to avoid or mitigate crashes in situations like these, we developed a comprehensive scenario-based testing methodology called Waymo’s Collision Avoidance Testing (CAT). To maintain transparency and provide the public with a deeper understanding of our safety approach, we are publishing a paper to describe how we judge good collision avoidance performance, how we identify the right set of scenarios to test, and the testing tools we’ve developed.