GoKawiilThe National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has opened an investigation into Avride, a robotaxi company that has partnered with Uber, after identifying more than a dozen crashes and one minor injury.
The safety regulator’s Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) said all 16 crashes that it has identified have to do with “the competence of” Avride’s self-driving system, which has apparently struggled with changing lanes, responding to other vehicles in the same lane, and responding to stationary objects.
All of the crashes have come while the Avride vehicles were under the supervision of a safety monitor in the driver’s seat. Reached for comment, Avride declined to explain why the safety monitors did not intervene in these crashes. The company pointed out that it reported these crashes to the NHTSA as required by the agency’s 2021 Standing General Order on automated driving.
“We have implemented targeted technical and operational mitigations to address our findings from each reported incident between December 2025 and March 2026, and have further enhanced overall system capabilities,” the company said in a statement. “Our total operations have continued to grow, while the frequency of incidents relative to our mileage has steadily declined.”
Uber did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Avride, best known for its sidewalk delivery robots, is a subsidiary of Nebius, formerly Yandex NV, the Netherlands-based company that sold off its Russian business in 2024. The company has also spent years developing and testing self-driving cars, and struck a partnership with Uber in 2024. The following year, Uber and its parent company Nebius agreed to make “strategic investments and other commitments” to Avride worth up to $375 million.
The investigation comes just a few months after Uber started offering rides in Avride robotaxis in Dallas, Texas, which is where “many of the reported crashes have occurred,” according to the ODI. Some of the crashes also occurred in Austin, Texas. At least one of the reported crashes involved a robotaxi carrying a passenger.
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