Waymo Builds Virtual Human Driver to Validate Fully Autonomous Safety

Waymo published ReD (Reference Driver) on 10 June 2026, a cognitive model encoding how competent human drivers avoid collisions. The system benchmarks Waymo's 6th-generation autonomous stack against human-level crash-avoidance behavior, moving beyond miles-driven metrics to scenario-level comparisons. This validates the safety threshold for fully driverless operations—no human safety operator in the vehicle.