The Alphabet subsidiary has lodged an appeal with a judge so as not to have to publish all the data relating to accidents involving its autonomous vehicles. Waymo also does not intend to communicate on the measures taken following these accidents. The American company invokes the “business secrecy”, so that this data remains secret.
Waymo does not want to release accident data from its autonomous vehicles
Waymo has filed a lawsuit against the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), in an attempt to prevent crash data from its self-driving cars are not made public. The subsidiary of Alphabet, whose vehicles have already traveled 32 million kilometers, defends itself by ensuring that this information must imperatively be considered as secret data, to preserve commercial secrecy.
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Very few companies are licensed to operate fully autonomous vehicles in the United States. In California, they are all under the control of the Department of Motor Vehicles. Of the 60 companies authorized to carry out tests, only a handful of them have the right to operate driverless vehicles. This is the case of Waymo. For the companies concerned, the Department of Motor Vehicles regularly requests the publication of data, in order to fully understand the evolution of autonomous driving and to be able to control all aspects of it.
Following a request for the publication of documents, Waymo refuses that data on accidents involving its autonomous vehicles without safety driver are not made public. In the week of January 17, 2022, Waymo therefore filed an appeal in Sacramento County Superior Court.
The Alphabet subsidiary believes that “disclosure of this information to the public would place Waymo at a competitive disadvantage”. To put it simply, the company does not want the process for analyzing accidents to be made public, at the risk of providing “strategic insight to its competitors”.
Should this data be considered trade secrets?
Waymo also believes the disclosure of this data could have a chilling effect on the entire industry autonomous vehicles. The company says market players interested in deploying self-driving vehicles in California will be deterred from investing valuable time and resources in developing the technology if it is proven that their trade secrets have been leaked.
The disengagement report, required annually by the DMV, and which must include the number of kilometers traveled and the frequency with which the operators were forced to regain control of the vehicles, is criticized by many companies in the sector. They feel that it is less and less relevant and describe this report as a means “misleading and unnecessary” to follow the progress of the tests in California.
Waymo is willing to share data on tests performed, but largely on his own terms. The company, for example, explained how its autonomous vehicles could have prevented dozens of fatal accidents, which actually occurred in Arizona, over nearly a decade.