Self-driving cars are supposed to reduce traffic — what if they don’t?

The age of robotaxis, once reserved for science fiction, is now a reality, especially in a few American cities. It took more than ten years to leave DARPA’s Big Challenges to the beginning of the Waymo business service in California, although he previously had a security guard.

Supporters of the technology, which has attracted at least $100 billion in funding, say robotaxis will be safer than human-operated vehicles. And last yearWaymo’s data showed that its vehicles were involved in fewer accidents than human drivers, with lower insurance premiums, though recent news and school buses and flooded streets show expertise he is not perfect.

But safety isn’t the only selling point: Autonomous vehicles they say they will slow down the traffic. But data from Waymo’s reports to the California Public Utilities Commission show that, in this regard, robotaxis are no better than ride-hailing services like Lyft and Uber.

Is anyone in there?

The study, published in Transport Effects By MIT Transit Lab Assistant Director of Researcher Awad Abdelhalim, he analyzes data from August 2023 to December 2025, a period of about 1,000 days. Meanwhile, Waymo’s robotaxis completed 13.8 million trips for 19.3 million passengers over a distance of 86.3 million miles (138.8 million km), growing at an average of 15 percent per month. Abdelhalim wanted to see how much of that rise was created by deadheading – known as “deadheading” – and how that number changed over time.

Initially, only 36 percent of Waymo’s miles were driven by a rider. But by the end of the study period, that had risen to about 56 percent and then plateaued, Abdelhalim found. So about 44 percent of Waymo’s trips are driven by empty EVs.

I’m not completely surprised; On my recent trip to San Francisco, the sensor-obsessed Jaguar I-Paces have been thick on the ground, but I rarely see people riding in them.

In fact, there are two different types: empty cars driving around waiting to be given a ride and empty cars driving to pick up passengers (passengers). And Waymo has been steadily reducing the number of empty miles driven on its way to a destination as it expands its fleet. The number of miles traveled per trip has also decreased, in part due to Waymo’s introduction of freeway service, the author points out.