Freeways are far easier for a robot to drive on than streets. Driving on freeways would significantly lower Waymo's accident per mile rate.

The difference is that accidents on a freeway are far more likely to be fatal than accidents on a city street.

Waymo didn't avoid freeways because they were hard, they avoided them because they were dangerous.

> Driving on freeways would significantly lower Waymo's accident per mile rate.

Maybe. We don’t know for sure.

You seem to frame that a bit like Waymo is cheating or padding their numbers.

But I see that as them taking appropriate care and avoiding stupid risks.

Anyway as someone else pointed out they recently started doing freeways in Austin so we’ll know soon.

Freeway accidents, due to their nature, are a lot harder to ignore and underreport than accidentally bumping or scraping into another car at low speeds. It's like using murder rates to estimate real crime rates because murders, unlike most other crimes, are far more likely to be properly documented.