Imagine a world where we successfully remove every single drunk driver from the road. Achieving this would be a monumental victory. Alcohol impairment remains a massive, critical crisis on public roads, directly contributing to over 30% of all traffic deaths in the U.S. Eliminating it is a mission we proudly support alongside long-standing partners like Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).

But our latest peer-reviewed research highlights a second, equally sobering truth that we cannot ignore: traffic fatalities rarely result from a single factor, and improving road safety requires examining conditions beyond driver behavior alone.

This is where the broader potential of autonomous technology emerges. Beyond introducing a driver that is always sober, Waymo offers a unique opportunity to address the wider, interconnected risks of our roadway ecosystem.

To understand how deeply embedded roadway danger really is, our first study — accepted for publication in the Journal of Safety Research — set out to answer a question: How well do humans perform when they are completely sober?

Because national traffic databases do not track vehicle miles traveled (VMT) by a driver’s blood alcohol concentration (BAC), our researchers built an innovative “exposure reconstruction” model. S. urban areas. We then used these figures to establish unimpaired driving baselines in each city. This spatial and temporal mapping is a major breakthrough for public safety research, offering unprecedented visibility into local impaired driving patterns.

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