Are self-driving cars safer than cars with drivers?

More or Less: Behind the Stats

• Episode: Are self-driving cars safer than cars with drivers?
• Website: More or Less: Behind the Stats
• Feed URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02nrss1/episodes/downloads.rss
• Duration: 00:08:58
• Published: 2025-08-30 07:00

Fully autonomous cars are here. In a handful of cities across the US and China, robotaxis are transporting human passengers around town, but with no human behind the wheel.

Loyal Listener Amberish wrote in to More or Less to ask about a couple of safety statistics he’d seen regarding these self-driving cars on social media. These claimed that Waymo self-driving taxis were five times safer than human drivers in the US, and that Tesla’s self-driving cars are 10 times safer.

But, are these claims true?

We speak to Mark MacCarthy, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution Center for Technology Innovation, to find out.

If you’ve seen some numbers you think we should look at, email the team: [email protected]

Presenter: Lizzy McNeill Producer: Nicholas Barrett Series producer: Tom Colls Production co-ordinator: Brenda Brown Sound mix: Neil Churchill Editor: Richard Vadon