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Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana believes other companies working on autonomous vehicles need to do more to prove their technology is safe, she said during an interview at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mawakana had just been asked who she considered to be on the list of companies trying to make roads safer during Monday\u2019s interview.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know who\u2019s on that list, because they\u2019re not telling us what\u2019s happening with their fleets,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n Prioritizing safety while scaling operations was a big topic during the interview, and Mawakana was sure to cite the data Waymo recently released<\/a> that shows, by its count, that the company\u2019s vehicles are five times safer than human drivers and 12 times safer with respect to pedestrians.<\/p>\n Mawakana declined to say whether she was specifically talking about Tesla, but there are only a few companies in the U.S. right now claiming to be working on robotaxi tech. <\/p>\n Tesla publishes<\/a> quarterly \u201cvehicle safety reports.\u201d But that data only focuses on the use of the company\u2019s Autopilot driver assistance technology, which is designed to be used on highways, where the rate of crashes is lower than on surface streets. (And the latest report shows an uptick in crashes<\/a>.) Tesla has not released any public data about the safety of its nascent robotaxi pilot program in Austin, Texas.<\/p>\n Other companies in the space are early in the deployment phase or still testing their technology. Zoox has only just begun offering rides in its purpose-built AV in Las Vegas, Nevada. Companies like May Mobility and Pony AI are similarly starting up commercial operations. Aurora, the self-driving trucks company, has published a safety framework<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI think there is a responsibility, if you\u2019re going to put vehicles on the road, and you\u2019re going to remove the driver from behind the wheel, and you\u2019re going to have someone in some other room observing the fleet who can take over their vehicles, it is incumbent upon you to be transparent about what\u2019s happening,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd if you are not being transparent, then it is my view that you are not doing what is necessary in order to actually earn the right to make the road safer.\u201d <\/p>\n