What happens when a Waymo is at fault in a crash?

PHOENIX (AZFamily) — After some close calls involving driverless Waymos on Arizona roads, Arizona’s Family Investigates set out to answer a simple question: How often are autonomous vehicles at fault in crashes — and when they are, can they get a ticket?

The answer isn’t easy to find.

Federal crash data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) shows Waymo vehicles were involved in at least 202 crashes in Arizona between 2021 and 2024, ranging from minor scrapes and door dings to 31 crashes that resulted in injuries. But the records are heavily redacted and do not indicate who was at fault.

Arizona’s Family Investigates spent six months collecting and reviewing police reports on Waymo crashes in Phoenix, Scottsdale, Chandler, Mesa and Tempe. Of the 71 police-documented crashes involving Waymos, officers determined the self-driving car was not at fault 87% of the time. In 13% of cases, however, police blamed the Waymo vehicle.

‘This is a computer’

One of those cases involved Jaafar Yaseen, who said a Waymo crossed the double yellow line and struck his vehicle in Old Town Scottsdale in October 2024. “It is scary,” Yaseen said. “Especially when I saw it’s Waymo. This is a computer. This is not a human being. This is AI. So it kinda scared me.”

The Waymo, which was carrying a passenger, crossed into the wrong lane and scraped the driver’s side of Yaseen’s car before stopping a short distance down the road, according to the police report and photos from the scene. Photos show the autonomous vehicle stopped in the wrong lane.

“Do you think a human driver would have done this?” I asked Yaseen. “Of course not,” he replied. “Especially in a crowded situation like this. I’m gonna call it reckless.”

Waymo launched the world’s first self-driving ride-hailing service in Arizona in late 2020. Since then, the company’s research shows Waymo vehicles are involved in 81% fewer injury crashes and 88% fewer property damage claims than human drivers, according to a study published jointly with researchers at Swiss Reinsurance Company. “Collisions will and can occur, and we are absolutely prepared to respond to them,” said Camille Dredge, Waymo’s senior director of ride-hailing operations.

However, Waymo’s research and the analysis by Arizona’s Family Investigates did not include cases where a confused Waymo caused other vehicles to crash, and the Waymo car wasn’t touched. We found at least one example of this in October near 54th Street and Chandler Road in Chandler.

Can Waymo cars get a traffic ticket?

Arizona’s Family also uncovered cases where Waymo vehicles behaved in ways that officers believed warranted a citation. In 2021, Joel Caspers was rear-ended by a Waymo while stopping for a red light on Chandler Boulevard. “It totaled the car,” Caspers said. “They must have been doing 30 [mph], it seemed like, because it knocked us into the center of the intersection.”

The investigating officer wrote, “At this time, [the Waymo] was not issued a citation since the Waymo was in autonomous mode and no person was inside the vehicle at the time of the crash.”

“I thought they would have issued the handler a ticket or the corporation a ticket,” Caspers said. “Somebody should have gotten something.”

Last June, body-camera video captured a Phoenix police officer pulling over a Waymo after it crossed into oncoming traffic near a construction zone. The officer did not issue a citation and instead spoke with Waymo’s rider support team. “There’s a little bit of a construction area, and it went into opposing lanes of traffic, which is real bad,” the officer is heard saying in body-camera footage.

Asked whether it’s fair that Waymo cars can’t receive citations like human drivers, Dredge said the company abides by traffic laws and has received parking citations in the past. “If the vehicle is pulled over, it would work to pull over to a safe spot and interact with law enforcement that way,” she said.

When a person applies for a permit to operate autonomous vehicles on Arizona roads, state law requires the applicant to acknowledge they “may be issued a traffic citation or other applicable penalty” if an AV commits a moving violation.

“Autonomous vehicles follow the same road rules as human drivers. While the process for the issuance of citation can be somewhat different when there’s no human driver in the car, an autonomous vehicle would get a ticket in a situation where a human would,” a Waymo spokesperson said via email. 

In practice, however, the Phoenix Police Department has said it’s “not feasible” to track down the owner of an AV company to issue moving violations. None of the crash reports obtained by Arizona’s Family resulted in police ticketing Waymo.

Ultimately, citations are designed to change driver behavior. Waymo can change the behavior of its vehicles by updating its software, and the company has shown it can push out fixes in a matter of weeks.

In December 2023, two Waymos crashed into a vehicle under tow near Van Buren and 36th Street. Waymo issued a software recall and started rolling out a fix within nine days. The update was pushed to the full fleet in a month.

Another incident, in which a Waymo hit a utility pole near Seventh Avenue and Roosevelt Street in Phoenix in May 2024, triggered a software update across Waymo’s full fleet of 672 vehicles within 16 days.

Still, for crash victims like Caspers and Yaseen, quick software fixes are not enough. “I don’t think it’s ready yet,” Yaseen said. “For sure, they’re not ready yet. I mean, I feel they’re dangerous.”

What to do if you collide with a Waymo

Under Arizona law, it is a crime to leave the scene of a crash without exchanging information, including a collision with an autonomous vehicle. Dredge said drivers involved in a collision with a Waymo vehicle can contact the company’s support team in several ways.

After pulling over to a safe location, drivers should visit waymo.com/notify, where they can either call emergency support or fill out a form to exchange insurance information.

If a driver doesn’t have access to a phone or the internet, they can wait with the vehicle for Waymo’s roadside assistance team to arrive. Dredge added that Waymo vehicles are equipped with speakers that can connect directly to customer support.

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