Dietterich Challenges Waymo's Safety Claims and Liability

AI researcher Thomas Dietterich posted a series of messages on X on November 14–15, systematically questioning Waymo's safety record and deployment pace, and engaging in heated debates with Miles Brundage and others.

What's confirmed

• Dietterich argues collision statistics aren't the only metric that matters: Waymo should measure how often other vehicles and pedestrians need to take emergency evasive action, which he calls "counter-factual near-miss."
• In debates over whether Waymo's safety record has reached "superhuman" levels, he listed the vehicles' actual flaws: they can be confused by flashing lights, drift into wrong lanes, and fail to handle fog and waterlogged roads, suggesting people watch the relevant real-world footage.
• Responding to discussions about Washington, D.C. restricting Waymo vehicles, he said Waymo "has a lot to prove": it seems unable to fix known defects through system updates, has not built a high-reliability safety culture, and experiences problems almost daily.
• In his exchange with Miles Brundage, he argued that clear liability laws and regulation should be established before autonomous vehicles scale up deployment, noting that Waymo currently doesn't pay for the external costs it imposes on third parties—especially the cost of delayed emergency vehicles. Brundage disagreed, and the two sparred sharply over deployment speed.

Why it matters

• The debate goes to the heart of methodology for assessing autonomous driving safety: whether collision-rate statistics alone suffice to demonstrate safety, or whether impacts on other road users (near-misses, delays, and other external costs) must also be factored in.
• As Waymo expands across multiple cities, this public academic critique of its safety culture and defect-fixing capability offers an important reference for debates over regulatory legislation and deployment pacing.

2026-11-14 ~ 2026-11-15 · 7 related posts

• [source] AI researcher Dietterich slams Waymo: unclear safety culture, known defects go unfixed — tdietterich · 2026-11-14
• AI luminary Thomas Dietterich calls out Waymo failures with blinking lights, fog and wrong lanes — tdietterich · 2026-11-15
• [source] Thomas Dietterich: Waymo should track 'counterfactual near misses' as a KPI — tdietterich · 2026-11-15
• Thomas Dietterich: Waymo Isn't Paying for Costs It Imposes, Liability Laws First — tdietterich · 2026-11-15
• [source] Waymo criticized for unpaid external costs as AV liability debate heats up — Zergylord · 2026-11-15
• Dietterich: Waymo needs a sensor-laden human-driven control car to prove it saves lives — tdietterich · 2026-11-15
• Tom Dietterich: Waymo needs a human-driven sensor-packed control condition — tdietterich · 2026-11-15