Robotaxis Are Multiplying. The Rules for Who Pays After a Crash Aren't.
Waymo, Zoox and Tesla are now carrying paid passengers with no driver aboard, but no state or federal law yet spells out who is liable when one of these cars causes a crash.
What happened: Driverless taxis have moved from pilot projects to everyday service. Waymo runs commercial robotaxis in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix and Austin, Zoox carries passengers in Las Vegas, and Tesla operates a limited robotaxi pilot in Texas. Millions of paid rides have been completed with nobody behind the wheel. What hasn't caught up is the legal system for deciding who pays when one of these cars is in a crash - a question regulators, insurers and courts are still answering case by case rather than under any single clear rule.
Why it matters: Crash liability has always started with a human driver: who ran the light, who was speeding. Take the driver out, and fault shifts toward the company that built or operates the system, a legal category called product liability, which is slower, costlier to litigate and depends on technical evidence only the manufacturer holds. It also spreads blame across more parties: the fleet operator, the carmaker, the software company, the sensor supplier and any remote-assistance team monitoring the ride, each of whom can point at the others.
How a claim actually plays out: In California, where most robotaxi miles happen, the DMV issues permits and requires crash reporting, while the Public Utilities Commission regulates fares and sets insurance rules. Operators must carry substantial coverage, so an insurer technically exists to claim against. But victims report that identifying the right insurer and getting the camera, lidar and software logs showing what the car saw before impact takes far longer than in an ordinary crash claim, especially when a robotaxi and a human driver collide and fault gets split between two very different insurance systems.
The regulatory gap: NHTSA opened a review of Waymo's driving system in 2024 after incidents including crashes into stationary objects and odd behavior near school buses, and Waymo has issued software recalls since. After a Cruise robotaxi struck and dragged a pedestrian in San Francisco in 2023, California suspended Cruise's permits and GM eventually shut the unit down. But these actions discipline companies, they don't compensate injured people. No state or federal bill assigning clear driverless-crash liability has passed, even as fleets are set to grow from low thousands of vehicles into the tens of thousands.