Since Waymo arrived on the public stage as Google's self-titled autonomous-driving project almost 20 years ago, the promise that self-driving cars would dramatically curtail crashes has remained just that. A handful of companies operate autonomous ride-hailing services in some cities (San Francisco is downright lousy with autonomous cars), but high-profile mishaps show how elusive real progress is. Yet Waymo may be heading in the right direction, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. The nonprofit organization backed by the insurance industry and known for very thorough crash tests recently took a look at Waymo's safety record. In a study published this week, researchers found that Waymo vehicles are involved in fewer crashes than human drivers per vehicle mile traveled (VMT). That's based on an analysis of crash rates in the cities where Waymo currently operates—San Francisco, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Austin—using available data. And the limitations of those data are the real takeaway. Waymo vehicles traveled about 50 million miles autonomously during the period studied, compared to about 222 billion miles for human drivers in the same locations, over the same timespan. The overall rate of crashes for the Waymo vehicles was 68% lower per VMT than human drivers, and that mostly held up on a city-by-city basis. The crash rate for Waymo self-driving cars was 76% lower in Phoenix, 35% lower in San Francisco, and 71% lower in Los Angeles. The Waymo fleet had 4% higher crashes in Austin than human drivers, but the sample size was relatively small. And Waymo cars were involved in 85% fewer single-vehicle crashes and 81% fewer crashes resulting in injuries per VMT than human drivers overall. But as the IIHS explains in an accompanying press release, getting any meaningful comparison between human and autonomous driving wasn't easy. While companies are required to