Waymo and Self-Driving Car Accident Claims

When a Waymo or another driverless car hits you, the injury claim runs against the company that owns and operates it, because no person was driving.

Most of the states where robotaxis carry riders treat the self-driving system itself as the driver, which puts the operator's conduct and insurance at the center of the case.

Waymo now carries riders in 15 metro areas, from Phoenix and Los Angeles to Houston, Atlanta, Miami, Nashville, and Las Vegas.

The car records what it saw and did, and federal rules require the company to report serious crashes to NHTSA within days.

That record sits with the company, and a written preservation request is the first step that protects it.

Tesla Autopilot and FSD crashes are a different claim, because a human driver was still responsible for the car.

Call (888) 713-6653 for a free review of a crash with a self-driving car. No fee unless we win.

Waymo lists 15 metro areas where it serves riders, with Washington, D.C. and New York named as next.^[1] Fourteen of the fifteen are in seven states:

• Arizona - Phoenix, fully driverless for the public since October 8, 2020, Waymo's oldest market and the setting for many Phoenix car crash claims
• California - San Francisco (open to all since June 2024), Los Angeles (since November 2024), and San Diego (riders since September 2026)
• Texas - Austin through the Uber app since March 2025; Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio, with first riders in February 2026
• Georgia - Atlanta, through the Uber app since June 2025
• Florida - Miami and Orlando, open to everyone since April 15, 2026, and Tampa since September 2026
• Tennessee - Nashville, with rider invitations from April 2026
• Nevada - Las Vegas, with first public riders on September 14, 2026 and access phased in

Tesla began unsupervised Cybercab rides in Austin on September 3, 2026.^[2] Zoox, Amazon's robotaxi company, runs purpose-built vehicles with no steering wheel under a federal exemption that took effect July 31, 2026, and lists Las Vegas, San Francisco, Austin, Miami, Atlanta, and Los Angeles as operating areas.^[3]

These lists change almost monthly. This section was checked on November 2, 2026, and we re-check it each quarter.

In every one of these cities, the car that hit you belongs to a company with commercial coverage and its own claims process, which is a stronger starting point than a crash with an uninsured private driver.

State autonomous-vehicle laws answer two questions: who is treated as the driver when the system is engaged, and what insurance the vehicle has to carry.

These statutes settle who gets the ticket and who has to be insured. Your injury claim still rests on ordinary negligence against the company that owns and runs the car, and on product liability when the software, sensors, or design failed. In Arizona, for example, the engaged system is the driver for purposes of the traffic laws, and the company that filed the state's required statement is the one cited when the car breaks them.^[4]

The case moves away from what a driver saw toward what the company's software was built to do, and the company holds the evidence of both.

Call 911 if anyone is hurt, and get a police report even if the car pulls away under its own control.

Report It to the Company

Waymo takes collision reports at 1-844-263-9885, through an online collision form, by email at insurance@waymo.com, and through a QR code on the vehicle's front doors.^[5] It posts proof-of-insurance cards for Arizona, California, Texas, Georgia, Florida, and Washington, D.C., among other places, though none yet for Nevada or Tennessee.

Record What the Federal File Will Leave Out

Write down the exact time, the street and cross street, and the direction the car was traveling. The public federal crash file withholds the location and shows only the month and year, so your own notes are what tie a report to your crash.

Be Careful With the Company's Insurer

A claims representative may call quickly and ask for a recorded account. Our page on whether to give a recorded statement explains what that call is for and what to say.

Reporting the collision opens the company's file; it does not open yours, and the two can tell different stories about what the car did.

A Waymo or Zoox vehicle carries cameras, lidar, and radar, and it logs its own decisions.

In a robotaxi case, the facts that decide liability are often what the car decided you were and how many seconds before impact it decided it. Waymo says its risk team reviews every collision, so the company may have studied your crash from every camera angle. A driverless car's log reads the same a week after the crash and two years later at trial, as long as the company kept it.

The Federal Crash Report

NHTSA's Standing General Order requires a report within five days for a crash with an automated driving system engaged in the 30 seconds before impact that involves a death, a hospital transport, a struck pedestrian or cyclist, or an airbag deployment, and other crashes are reported monthly.^[6] NHTSA publishes the reports each month with personal information removed and with whatever the company marks as confidential blacked out.

Of Waymo's 1,283 reports in the public file through September 15, 2026, 1,117 list property damage only. The file shows that a report exists. It does not hand you the video.

California's 30-Second Rule

In California, an autonomous vehicle must capture sensor data from at least 30 seconds before a collision, and the manufacturer has to keep it for three years.^[7] We found no comparable retention rule in the other states' autonomous-vehicle statutes, which makes a preservation demand the first piece of legal work outside California.

The same idea runs through ordinary crashes, where a car's event data recorder captures speed and braking. A robotaxi's record is far richer, and far more contested.

Where you were decides which rules come first.

Hit as a Pedestrian, Cyclist, or Driver

You never agreed to anything with the company. Your claim runs against the operator under your state's negligence and vehicle-owner rules, and against the manufacturer where a defect played a part. A driver hit by a robotaxi also has their own policy's coverage for the first medical bills in states that require it.

Riding as a Passenger

A rider accepted Waymo's or Uber's terms in the app before the trip, and those terms can control where and how a claim is resolved, so they are the first document to read. If another driver caused the crash, that driver's insurer is in the claim as well.

Florida Riders

Florida runs autonomous ride services under its rideshare law, so a company logged on or carrying a rider must have $1 million in primary liability coverage plus PIP and uninsured motorist coverage.^[8] PIP pays the first medical bills, as in any Florida crash.

For a rider, the terms of service and the state's coverage rule matter as much as the crash itself, and both are on paper before the first call to an adjuster.

Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (Supervised) are driver-assist systems. NHTSA classifies FSD as Level 2 and says the driver remains fully responsible, so a crash claim usually starts against the human driver and that driver's insurance.

The manufacturer can still share the fault. In Benavides v. Tesla, a 2019 crash in Key Largo involving a Model S on Autopilot, a Miami federal jury found Tesla 33 percent at fault, awarded $129 million in compensatory damages and $200 million in punitive damages, and the court entered judgment against Tesla for $242,570,000.^[9] The court denied Tesla's post-trial motions in February 2026, and Tesla has appealed to the Eleventh Circuit.

Since Benavides, people hit by a Tesla ask whether theirs is a case against Tesla. Many Autopilot crashes are the driver's crash, and we tell them so. Tesla belongs in the claim when the data, read by an engineer, shows the system shaped what happened.

A product claim against Tesla turns on how the system was designed, where it was allowed to engage, and what the driver was told about its limits. Tesla's unsupervised Cybercab rides in Austin are the other kind of case, with no driver to share the fault, and NHTSA has open inquiries into both the Cybercab and FSD.

The driver's policy pays first, and the question of whether the car's maker belongs in the case is worth asking early, while the vehicle and its data still exist.

NHTSA's investigations and the recalls they produce are public, and they fix a date and a behavior the company itself identified.

• PE24016 - An investigation opened in May 2024 and closed in July 2025 that reviewed 367 Waymo incidents, including 109 crashes, and led to recalls 24E049 and 25E034
• PE25013 and recall 25E084 - An investigation of Waymo cars passing stopped school buses, opened October 17, 2025, and a recall of 3,067 vehicles filed December 10, 2025 after a software update^[10]
• PE26001 - Opened January 29, 2026, after a Waymo struck a child in Santa Monica on January 23, 2026; the child's injuries were minor
• Tesla - Open inquiries into FSD traffic violations, FSD in low visibility, and robotaxi speeding in school zones

A recall does not prove that a defect caused your crash. It does show what the company knew and when it fixed it, and a crash with the same behavior before the fix date is the strongest version of that argument.

The same facts drive value here as in any serious crash, with two differences: the defendant can pay, and a product claim can add damages a driver case does not have.

• The injury - Surgery, permanent limitation, scarring, and the treatment still ahead
• Lost income and earning capacity - Measured over the working life the injury changed
• The coverage layer - $1 million while a Florida AV ride service is on a trip, $1.5 million for a Nevada network company, and the commercial coverage the operator carries elsewhere
• A defect claim - Where the design or software failed, the manufacturer's conduct is in front of the jury, and punitive damages can follow in the worst cases
• Your share of fault, if any - Reduced or barred under your state's comparative fault rule

No figure from another case predicts yours. Benavides is a jury verdict still on appeal, and most robotaxi crashes in the federal file involve no injury at all. When the injury is serious, the case is built on the vehicle's data, an accident reconstruction, and, where the system failed, an engineer who can read the software logs.

The ordinary injury deadline of the state where the crash happened applies, and the differences are large:

• One year - Tennessee
• Two years - Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, and Texas
• Three years - New York and Washington, D.C.

A product claim against a manufacturer can also face a statute of repose that runs from the vehicle's sale, and a claim involving a government vehicle has its own notice deadline. Our table of injury filing deadlines in every state covers the exceptions.

The legal deadline is rarely the one that hurts these cases. The data is, so the preservation letter goes out in the first week whatever the state.