Waymo released new crash safety data Thursday showing that across Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix and San Francisco, its driverless vehicles were involved in 841 fewer injury-causing crashes than human drivers.
But here in D.C. — where the autonomous vehicle company has been testing since April 2024 — if you request any crash data from D.C.’s Department of Transportation, you’ll come up short.
That’s because while the D.C. statute creating the city’s AV testing program required any “permit holder” to submit crash data to DDOT on a quarterly basis, it then provided those companies a blanket exemption from Freedom of Information Act requests for that information. DDOT is supposed to publish that data online itself, though it has not.
The statute’s opacity has raised concerns, as it means the D.C. council will soon vote on whether to permit driverless cars’ operation in the District without data on how many times AVs have crashed while testing here, and where and how those incidents happened. It’s debatable whether the statute, which DDOT cites when denying FOIA requests, even applies yet, as no AV company has yet been granted a permit to operate in the city.
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“This data should be able to be reported,” Ward 6 council member Charles Allen, who chairs D.C.’s transportation committee, told The Washington Sun. “In previous hearings, I’ve asked, ‘Well, have there been any crashes? What type of data are you reporting out?’ And DDOT had said that there have been no crashes, so we don’t have a report to share.”
As of that July hearing, federal data shows that 14 AV-involved crashes had already happened in D.C., and a 15th happened that same month. AV companies are required to report to the federal government within a day of learning of a crash. Of the 15 crash incidents that a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration dashboard shows have happened to date since July 2021, six resulted in minor injuries — with one hospitalization — and four in property damage. The federal data is a start, but it lacks details including street addresses and exact dates. Multiple entries have the “narrative” section explaining what happened redacted entirely.
Eight of the incidents involved the Ford-backed, and since-folded, Argo AI; six involved Waymos and one involved a Beep, Inc. vehicle, a company that is currently inactive, according to DDOT.
Those numbers aren’t outlandish, especially when compared to citywide stats: Around 100,000 regular vehicle accidents happened in the same period, according to a Sun analysis of Open Data DC statistics, and there have been 236 traffic fatalities to date since 2021, according to D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department. It goes without saying that there are far more human-manned cars driving around D.C., but the data shows that the incidents DDOT is keeping under seal are relatively tame.
The Sun learned of the D.C. statute blocking a local release of those records when DDOT cited it to deny aJuly FOIA request for crash data from its AV testing program. Fritz Mulhauser, a D.C. attorney familiar with open records rules and a member of the board of the D.C. Open Government Coalition, doesn’t think the statute applies to the records requested, because technically the District doesn’t yet have “permit applicants and permit holders” subject to the exemption asAVs haven’t officially yet been rolled out here.
Allen doesn’t think the information should have been withheld even under the law as written.
“DDOT cannot deny the data that you were requesting because you didn’t ask for any proprietary information,” Allen said. “And, big picture here, I do believe that being responsive to data requests is important, but I’d go beyond that. It shouldn’t just have to be [that] someone’s asking the question, there’s a value in proactively reporting information.”
Allen said his bill legalizing the operation of driverless cars in the District would override the 2019 law, and has in place “robust” public reporting requirements on not just crashes but on response times, miles traveled with and without passengers and how many wheelchair-accessible rides were requested versus completed.
“It’s not just about good oversight and accountability, I think it also builds trust in something that’s new,” he said.
The Sun is appealing DDOT’s denial of that request with the mayor’s office, which expects to issue a final decision within the next few weeks. Allen said the information should be made publicly available in time for any further hearings or votes on AV operations.
“We’re going to be following up with DDOT to make sure that we have a full accounting,” he said.
Mulhauser put it plainly.
“DDOT should release the crash reports from the test drives, and the council should ask why records that the federal government publishes are secret here,” he said.
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