Robotaxis are getting much better at routine driving. That creates an uncomfortable paradox for the industry: autonomous vehicles can outperform human drivers on broad crash statistics while still struggling with rare situations that people can often interpret instinctively. A paradox of two truthsWaymo’s safety data makes a strong case that autonomous vehicles can outperform human drivers on some crash measures. But those figures describe overall crash performance, not whether an autonomous system will handle every unusual situation correctly. Traditional software can often be tested against a defined set of inputs, but autonomous vehicles operate in an environment where the inputs keep changing.