Avride Under Investigation for Self-Driving Crashes

The 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.

Investigation Highlights

• The crashes have occurred while Avride vehicles were under the supervision of a safety monitor in the driver's seat.
• The ODI said that the videos of the crashes show instances of the AVs changing lanes into the path of or directly into other vehicles traveling in an adjacent lane and in close proximity to an AV.
• The investigation comes just a few months after Uber started offering rides in Avride robotaxis in Dallas, Texas, where "many of the reported crashes have occurred," according to the ODI.

Avride's Response

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 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (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."

Background on Avride

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.

Other Investigations

The investigation into Avride comes amid expanded testing, deployment, and scaling of autonomous vehicle technologies by numerous companies across the United States, drawing increased scrutiny. Waymo is currently being investigated by both NHTSA and the National Transportation Safety Board for illegal behavior around school buses, and for a January crash in which one of the Alphabet-owned company's robotaxis struck a child.