Waymo Study: Sober Drivers Still Face Nearly 4x Nighttime Fatal Crash Risk

Waymo's peer-reviewed research finds that even fully sober drivers face 3.1 to 3.9 times higher nighttime fatal crash risk than in daytime, and that removing alcohol-impaired drivers cuts average urban fatal crash involvement by 23%, from 1.42 to 1.10 per 100 million miles. A second study of 37,654 fatal cases in the 2023 FARS database shows only 8.2% involved strictly human behavior factors alone. Waymo frames the findings as support for a Safe System Approach and for benchmarking autonomous driving against a zero-BAC human baseline.