Commercial robot incidents, Q1 2023
Q1 2023: 3 documented incidents involving commercial robots, 2 with a person hurt and 1 fatal. 1 reached a regulator, a recall or a court. Most involved Cruise (1). Largest class: autonomous vehicle (1).
Incidents are counted by the date they happened, 2023-01-01 to 2023-03-31. 0 cases were published to the register during the quarter, including older events documented for the first time. Counts measure what was reported in English and cleared verification; fleet sizes are not public, so nothing here is a rate. Rules on the methodology page. Previous quarter for comparison: Q4 2022.
By kind of machine
- Autonomous vehicle1
- Delivery1
- Robot arm1
By company
- Cruise1
- Starship Technologies1
By outcome
- fatality1
- minor injury1
- property damage1
The cases that reached furthest
Ordered by severity, then by how many independent sources the case rests on.
- 2023-03-09Robot crushes 20-year-old worker to death at Hyundai/Kia supplier facilityFollow-up
- 2023-01-01A Starship food delivery robot reversed into a 73-year-old ASU parking attendant on the Tempe campus, knocking her down and causing a laceration near her left elbow and subsequent back pain.Lawsuit
- 2023-03-24A driverless Cruise robotaxi with no passengers rear-ended a San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Muni bus, causing modest damage to the bus and more severe damage to the robotaxi's front bumper, with no injuries reported.Follow-up
Whose incidents reach consequences
Share of a company's recorded incidents, across the whole register, that reached a regulator, a recall or a court. Companies with fewer than the threshold of cases are left out. Register total: 280 cases, 39 escalated.
- Zoox5/9 · 56%
- Cruise3/10 · 30%
- Tesla2/15 · 13%
- Starship Technologies1/9 · 11%
- Waymo5/69 · 7%
- Unitree Robotics0/11 · 0%
What the operators wrote in their own crash reports
1437 crash reports filed with NHTSA by 17 operators under the Standing General Order, read by theme. The federal file has one structured column for what was struck; these counts exist nowhere else.
- Emergency responders on scene, most often Waymo LLC128
- Stopped or blocking traffic, most often Waymo LLC124
- A pedestrian involved, most often Waymo LLC59
- A cyclist or scooter rider, most often Waymo LLC41
- Rear-ended by another vehicle, most often Zoox, Inc.36
- Roadworks, cones or a closure, most often Waymo LLC24
All 3 incidents dated Q1 2023
Newest first. Each one links to its timeline and to the sources it rests on. Case metadata is CC BY 4.0; cite the register by its DOI, 10.5281/zenodo.22925531.
- 2023-03-24A driverless Cruise robotaxi with no passengers rear-ended a San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Muni bus, causing modest damage to the bus and more severe damage to the robotaxi's front bumper, with no injuries reported.Follow-up
- 2023-03-09Robot crushes 20-year-old worker to death at Hyundai/Kia supplier facilityFollow-up
- 2023-01-01A Starship food delivery robot reversed into a 73-year-old ASU parking attendant on the Tempe campus, knocking her down and causing a laceration near her left elbow and subsequent back pain.Lawsuit