Tesla is planning to release self-driving taxis in June. Waymo has been scaling their self-driving taxi service for a while.
This market is to predict, between Waymo and Tesla, which company will first be responsible for a vehicle that is designed to be fully autonomous (i.e. operated with no driver behind the wheel, if there even is a wheel) and is available for public use causing a major accident. If the vehicle has a wheel, it must be operating without user input at the time of the crash.
A major accident must
Be reported on in at least two major news outlets, AND
Result in at least one fatality or one injury requiring hospitalization.
For a company's responsibility, either
The company admits primary wrongdoing, OR
The company is sued and found liable, OR
There is a settlement made that is publicly disclosed to involve the company giving some amount of money to another party. The amount of money need not be disclosed.
Once such a crash has met all these criteria and no other crashes from before that from the other company are pending litigation, the market will resolve to the company responsible for the crash.
Update 2025-11-02 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Non-human fatalities/injuries count: The requirement for "at least one fatality or one injury requiring hospitalization" does not specify that the victim must be human. Animal fatalities/injuries may qualify.
Regarding the Waymo/KitKat incident: The creator does not believe Waymo's statement about the cat incident constitutes admitting responsibility, but if responsibility conditions are met (admission, lawsuit liability, or settlement), the market could resolve based on this incident.
Update 2025-11-21 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Previous pet fatalities by Waymo do not disqualify future pet fatalities from counting: The creator acknowledges that while previous pet deaths by Waymo did not trigger resolution (because they didn't meet the responsibility conditions in the question), future pet deaths that DO meet the responsibility conditions (admission of wrongdoing, lawsuit liability, or settlement) will count toward resolution, consistent with the criteria that fatalities need not be human.
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Tesla has a worse safety record, but Waymo is so much further along scaling up robotaxi deployment and I don't think Tesla will catch up in scale quickly.
@VLC this isn’t the first pet killed by a Waymo, not sure that it’s fair to say killing another pet should be major if a previous one didn’t count
@DavidFWatson Fair point, though none of those examples would satisfy the responsibility conditions put in the question. Being consistent with my own question description requires counting pets, even though that was not my intention.
2025 Waymo Crash Updates
As of March 17, there have been 137 incidents in 2025 that have involved Waymo vehicles, as reported to the NHTSA.
From these incidents, there was one fatality, one serious injury, three moderate injuries, and 11 minor injuries.
91 of these crashes were in California, 39 in Arizona, six in Texas, and one in Georgia.
https://waymo.com/safety/impact/
Waymo has had about 60 collision with injuries. But they are mostly not getting into media
