TED Talks Daily - Waymo's case for a driverless future | Tekedra Mawakana, Sal Khan

Episode Date: May 11, 2026

What if we could solve the problem of fatal car accidents? Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana joins TED's Sal Khan to explore why fully autonomous vehicles (where you never have to touch the wheel) could end the dangerous status quo of traffic deaths. She makes the case for why self-driving cars are more than a tech novelty — they're an urgently needed upgrade that could make the world safer for everyone. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. Cars have gotten safer over the years. Airbags, seatbelts, better engineering. But as Waymo's co-CEO to Kedra Mawakana sees it, there's one safety problem the world has been patching around for decades. Humans. Nearly 37,000 people died on roads in the U.S. last year. And globally, that number is more than one million.

and we've just accepted it. We don't experience these as 737s falling out of the sky every day. But that's what it would be if we actually experienced it as mass casualties. We sort of have to remind people that the status quo is totally unacceptable, and it's even more unacceptable when you have technology that could help address it. When most people think about self-driving cars, the first instinct is to worry about whether they're safe. But in this conversation with Ted's Vision Stewart and CEO of

Khan Academy, Sal Khan. Tekeedra flips that question. What if the real danger is the status quo? She shares where autonomous driving actually stands today, what's accelerating the rollout, what's slowing it down, and what our cities might look like if we could turn parking lots into parks. That conversation is coming up right after a short break. And now our conversation of the day. Well, great to have you here, Tekeedra. It's great to be here. Thank you so much. So, Dracreda, what's next? I mean, every time I look at the news, I see a new city, I see new models. What's new? So we are currently operating in 11 cities in the U.S. We're providing 500,000 trips per week. And we have the goal by the end of the year to be at a million trips per week. And just to sort of help people wrap their mind around what that means or how to think about it, our fleet of vehicle,

is about 3,000 cars, and we drive, so the single Waymo driver drives over 4 million miles per week. And so the way to think about that is a human drives around 700,000 miles in a lifetime, a human who lives sort of the full lifetime. And so this is like six lifetimes of human driving per week. And so we're, you know, really excited. We're also in four airports right now. You can fly in to San Antonio or Phoenix, San Francisco, or San Jose, and jump in a Waymo.

Use the Waymo app. It'll take you from point A or point B. And so it's just, we're at this point where the technology has moved from, will it work, and can we produce the kind of safety outcomes that we care about to scaling? And so we're really excited. and we are also in London and Tokyo. We've moved from manual driving to fully autonomous driving. We still have people behind the wheel,

so we haven't launched a service yet, but those will be our first two international markets. What's the rate limiting factor? Is it some notion of safety, or is it regulation? What is it? It really depends. In certain markets, it's absolutely regulation. I think when you think about the evolution of this technology as a whole,

It's been making sure that we could have the safety outcomes that we want, and all of that is the technology. Like, can the driver produce these kinds of outcomes? We've driven over 200 million miles in our time, and based on 170 million miles of data, we are now reducing 13x reduction in serious injury-causing crashes over a human and the same amount of reduction as it relates to injuries with pedestrians. So we can now say that we are just over 10 times safer than a human at 170 million miles.

And so that's the kind of superhuman performance that we were seeking in order to then be able to scale this technology. Now we have markets that are closed, markets that are open, and we have to do all of the work with the cities, with the regulators, first responders, everyone in order to advance our technology. So we're laser focused on doing that. And the reality is, you know, citizens, consumers, writers, those who've been cut out of the mobility systems and cities, they're demanding and requesting and advocating for us to come. And so that's a really exciting inflection point also. It's worth triply underlining what you just said.

Over 10 times safer, at least based on the current data. We were talking earlier, y'all have already driven the equivalent of 300 lifetimes. Yeah, 240 lifetimes is the, yeah. And a waymo has not caused a death. That's right. Knock on wood. And there's an argument. There's 40,000 people roughly in America every year who die of a car accident.

I think in the world it's on the order of a million every year. So in theory, if this became everywhere, you could be saving 900,000 lives globally. You could be saving 35, 36,000 lives just in the United States. Why isn't there more – I know y'all are growing maybe as fast. but why not roll out as fast as possible? What's stopping that from happening? I think we are now focused on rolling out safely as quickly as possible.

There is an adoption curve that has to happen, though. Right? Like, I think what you're saying is what undergirds our entire company, which is like safety is urgent. You know, saving lives, if this technology can perform at this level, then we have a responsibility to figure out how to do it. Doesn't mean, though, that we're not being met with opposition.

And so we also have the burden of making those policymakers who are not welcoming us with open arms. You know, we have to demonstrate our safety records. So we have a safety hub. You know, we make all of this data transparent. We hand it to researchers so they can make their arguments. And so it's been really fun lately to watch different sectors of the economy start to talk about how powerful this technology is. You know, we have Dr. John Slotkin, a neurosurgeon, who has just calculated that, you know, 900 billion to 1.25 trillion could be saved if our technology was rolled out, if every car on the road was a waymo.

But this is the problem. People are really comfortable with the number of people who die on the roads. 40,000 people dead, 1.2 million globally, and avoidable in many cases, isn't something upon which we share collective outrage or even moderate discomfort. And so we have to introduce sort of that reality in order for the technology to be viewed as solving a problem that society currently faces because we've just accepted it. Why? Because we don't experience these as 737s falling out of the sky every day. But that's what it would be if we actually experienced it as mass casualties. We experience it, you know, this person's mom, that person, you know, my uncle. And so because of that, we sort of have to remind people that the status quo is totally unacceptable, and it's even more unacceptable when you have technology that could help address it.

Yes, definitely. I think there was a couple of months ago. You would know it much better. I saw a headline. It was a very click-bady headline. Waymo hits like an eight-year-old outside of a school. And I was like, oh, my God. And I click on it.

And then they described what happened, and it was outside of a school, and there was a car parked. And if I remember correctly, there was a kid. He just darted into the street. And the Waymo, everyone who was observing that, assumed the kid was going to be. going to die because he just darted into a street where traffic was coming and the waymo I don't know what the reflexes are you probably know the numbers it just immediately came to a stop

and it hit him at like four miles an hour or something like he literally just fell on his knees brushed it off and looked at the waymo kind of weird and then why why isn't you know there's a lot of it's convenient I mean it's you feel like you're in the future it's it's why isn't the safety I mean it feels like that message is that is that something that you all might want to lead with because that seems like such a clear value proposition. Yeah, I mean, you know, I think what you're saying is how comfortable are humans with this technology being better drivers than humans.

You know, it goes back to the status quo. There is, people don't generally view themselves or their neighbors or their friends or everyone they know as unsafe drivers. Even when they're distracted, drunk, tired, and angry, we just kind of accept that that's the human condition. And so I think, you know, in the case of the child in Santa Monica, I mean, for us, our car was traveling 17 miles per hour, and we were able to get to six miles per hour before making contact.

Obviously, we want to make no contact, but we know that was superhuman performance. And as so many of the bystanders said after observing it, like, the child would not have survived is what we were told. We weren't obviously there. Those moments actually cause entire communities to think differently about this technology. And so that's a, you know, to your point, it's clickbait. And on the other hand, it actually demonstrates what superhuman performance is.

Yeah, no, I could agree more. I actually do assume most of the people I know are not good drivers. I'm the biggest backseat driver. The economics of the industry, y'all are the first mover. Obviously, there's a Tesla Robotaxi. They've taken some different approaches. You have many other competitors, Amazon's coming into it. How are you thinking about the competitive space?

What do you think is going to happen to the economics of it? I mean, it's already cost competitive with a typical ride share drive. Yeah, I think, you know, right now for us, we're the only company operating at this scale. We think it's really important to just kind of stay lures or focused on that. You know, the way to think about it, because everyone's calling everything, either autonomous or Robo's taxi or, and so the way we think about it is if you do not need a driver's license to be in the car by yourself, which is for many, many people who do not have a driver's license, it's their first time ever in life. And so those are very special moments. But if you do not need a driver's license

to be in a way to go to get from point A to point B, that is fully autonomous, what is referred to you in the geeky sense, level four and level five. If it is anything less than that, if you have to be behind the wheel. If you have to take over, when there's a beep, when there's anything, that's level three or level two or level one. And it's really important for people to internalize this distinction because what we found back in 2012 when we had sort of a super cruise capability, the Waymo driver was at that ability. We could go from ramp to ramp, no problem. But when we got to surface streets, you needed to pay attention. And we told employees, This is early days.

When we go from ramp to ramp, we have a camera in the car, this was just for employees. We need you to pay attention. And people immediately unplugged from the driving task, and they started shaving and curling their eyelashes, and they were like picking up things from the back seat and plugging things in.

And so that's when we decided, you know, cars have gotten safer over the years, right? They've gotten airbags and seatbelts and all of these things as a result of a lot of. but what hasn't gotten safer is a human. And so we decided we're patching around the problem. Actually, the way to make sure that this multi-ton vehicle is not as dangerous is to actually let humans be humans.

Be distracted, make your phone call, do the thing you want to be doing, let the Waymo driver get you from point A to point B. And so when you ask me about competition, I think there are a host of companies that are, in the level two plus and level three, they need an attentive human after inviting the human to be inattentive, to be the most attentive at the moment when being most attentive is least convenient. And so that to me is not, that is still patching around the problem.

It doesn't mean it won't result in safer driving when you are attentive, but it isn't actually level for autonomy. Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you extrapolate all of this, how much do you all think about what the world is going to look like just because of this? Maybe just because of y'all and some of the other players, 10, 15 years, what will it look like? I mean, is there a world that you mentioned if you don't have a driver's list? Could this be a replacement in some ways for traditional public transportation? How are our roads different?

Our parking lot's going to turn into parks. What's going to happen? Yeah, we've partnered from the early days with transit. We think it's a really interesting way to take some of the congestion out of the city. have sort of the kiss and ride from the suburbs in, have people take Waymo rides. We've gotten really favorable sort of reviews and the reports that have been done there.

We've also partnered with people who take public transit in L.A. You know, we've offered discounts. If you do public transit to a Waymo or vice versa, you know, we want to think about the ways that this could become part of that fabric because we think it's important that this is also very accessible to a lot of people. So that's one.

But when we think about 10 to 15 years from now, it's really fun to think about parts of cities that would get recaptured, you know, space right now where cars are just sitting all day. People are at work, their cars are just sitting. Most of those parking lots in major cities around the world are central. And so the idea that that could get recaptured,

there are city planners who've reached out to us to try to understand, you know, do we have to make these investments for the next 10 or 15 years, or can we start imagining a world where parking structures could move out? Parks could come back, community life could sort of come back to the center of a city.

So that's a vision. I mean, who knows, right? I think some of this is, as the technology rolls out more and more, I think people's imagination actually starts to get sparked in ways that are very exciting. I said to you before,

it's like, in some ways people go from, you know, is it safe kind of to your poll, right? Is it safe? Should I get in? Okay, I got in. It's kind of boring and amazing. I really like it. Oh, this is kind of not a big deal. Now I'm going to be the coolest person I know in my friend group. And then all of a sudden it's like, oh, what could I do in this thing if it got really exciting? So I get pitched. I'm like, you should make it a yoga studio. You know, on wheels. I'm glad that was what was pitched. I thought this was going in a whole other direction. No, okay. This is my way. Everyone kind of starts to imagine what do I want to do.

instead of commuting. So that's the fun part. I had a very G-rated thought in Owemo on the highway on 101, and then I remember it, but it would have been embarrassing, and then I remembered you do have a camera without sound, so I didn't even act on my G-rated thought. Just to be clear, I do not have a camera. No, no, I was just going to do some grooming type of thing. Jobs, and I don't see this as something that's your responsibility in totality,

but my uncle drives an Uber in New Orleans, and I believe one of the largest jobs for men globally, and not just men, obviously women also drive vehicles, but definitely for men is driving some form of a vehicle, taxis, ride shares, long-haul trucking, et cetera. What happens? Yeah, I think, you know, I'll answer the question in a few ways. My uncle was actually a truck driver too,

and that job was really important to him. And, you know, for better or for worse, It was also a really hard job. And so I think there's an opportunity, and it's going to take a really thoughtful approach, right? Because, I mean, I'm sitting here talking about building the world's most trusted driver. And so it's a really tough place for me to sit in and kind of facilitate the dialogue around it.

However, over time, what I'm starting to see just from us is there are new jobs being created. So we have running our fleet. We have fleet technicians who we need, fleet operators, as well as smart depot, professionals. All of that didn't exist 10 years ago. These are like AV-focused jobs. One, two, jobs that exist today, everyday drivers,

we have to hire them, too, in order to validate our software. We have to accumulate miles. in order to validate our software. So we hire drivers constantly, or our partners, hire drivers in different parts of the world. We also need people who can, you know,

take care of our depots, build our depots, EV charging infrastructure. And so what we've started to see, as we have these partnerships of fleet operators, is they are driving a lot of job growth as we scale. So this is, you know, we're just too early to be able to really quantify it. But in addition to that,

Earlier this year, we did a partnership with Tech Force Foundation, where we're helping people who are in school to be mechanics to actually become mechanics of autonomous vehicles, because we think that transition doesn't have to pass anyone by. We just need to be mindful about it. So that's one thing we're doing. And then in addition, we are doing apprenticeship programs. We're doing one in L.A.

And we're doing curriculum development with Community College, Bronx Community College, City University of New York, because, again, there's an opportunity for people to learn the skills that are needed. And then I think while there's a lot of focus on sort of the jobs, there's also the like small businesses in these places where we're launching where because Waymo has launched, like in San Francisco, our first year, we actually drove $40 million of economic development

for local businesses from out-of-towners because we were the number one destination for tourists to try out of Waymo and then to go to a coffee shop and go to a restaurant. And so I think this is a long conversation. I appreciate you for saying, you know, we're one part of it. We take this series. We think it's important for us to be focused on it.

And we're also really excited when we get to go and talk to folks as they move from logistics into now AV-adjacent roles with their current skill set. So it doesn't all require upscaling. No, well, we could talk for hours about this. But thank you so much, DeKedra. Yes. Thank you so much.

That was awesome. That was to Kedra Mawakana in conversation with Sal Khan at TED 2026. If you're curious about Ted's curation, find out more at TED.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. Ted Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This talk was fact-checked by the TED Research team and produced an edit. by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green,

Lucy Little, and Tonica, Sung Marnivong. This episode was mixed by Christopher Faisi Bogan. Additional support from Emma Tobner and Daniela Balozo. I'm Elise Hu, I'll be back tomorrow

with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.