Uber partner Avride is under investigation for self-driving incidents

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has opened an investigation into Avride, a robotaxi company that 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 incidents it identified related to the “efficiency” of the Avride’s self-driving system, which apparently struggled with changing lanes, responding to other vehicles in the same lane, and responding to stationary objects.

All accidents occurred while Avride vehicles were under the supervision of a safety monitor in the driver’s seat. When reached for comment, Afried declined to explain why safety observers did not intervene in these incidents. The company noted that it reported these incidents to NHTSA as required by the agency’s 2021 Standing General Order on Automated Driving.

“We have implemented targeted technical and operational mitigation measures to address our findings from each incident reported between December 2025 and March 2026, and have enhanced overall system capabilities,” the company said in a statement. “Our overall operations have continued to grow, while the frequency of accidents relative to kilometers traveled has steadily decreased.”

Uber did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Avride, best known for its curbside delivery robots, is a subsidiary of Nebius, formerly known as Yandex NV, the Netherlands-based company that… She sold her Russian business In 2024. The company also spent years developing and testing self-driving cars, and entered into a partnership with Uber in 2024. The following year, Uber and its parent company Nebius agreed to Making “strategic investments and other commitments” to Avride worth up to $375 million.

The investigation comes just a few months after Uber I started offering trips In an Avride robo-taxi in Dallas, Texas, where “several reported incidents occurred,” according to ODI. Some incidents also occurred in Austin, Texas. At least one of the reported incidents involved a robotaxi carrying a passenger.

The investigation arrives amid expanded testing, deployment, and scaling up of self-driving vehicle technologies by numerous companies across the United States, requiring further scrutiny.

Waymo is currently being investigated by both the NHTSA and the National Transportation Safety Board Illegal behavior around school busesand the January crash that A child was hit by one of Alphabet’s robotaxis.

ODI said Friday it has completed a preliminary review of videos of each Avride incident. These videos, according to the office, show “instances of self-driving vehicles changing lanes in a lane or directly into other vehicles traveling in an adjacent lane and in close proximity to an autonomous vehicle; failing to slow down or stop for slow-moving or stopped vehicles in the lane and lane ahead; failing to slow down or avoid vehicles entering the lane and lane ahead; and striking stationary objects that partially block the lane and lane ahead.”

The accident that caused the minor injury occurred in December 2025 in Dallas, according to data provided to NHTSA. It involved an Avride-equipped Hyundai Ioniq 5 that clipped the open driver’s side door of a parked pickup truck. One of the truck’s passengers suffered minor injuries that did not require hospitalization.

Another accident in December in Dallas involved an Avride robotaxi that attempted to change lanes to avoid a stopped pickup truck, according to data provided to NHTSA. Afried’s vehicle turned into a truck next to it, causing damage to both vehicles.

Multiple crashes involved other vehicles turning into the Avride robo-taxi, though it is unclear from the descriptions whether there was an opportunity for the robo-taxi to avoid those collisions. At least one accident involved an Avride vehicle hitting a dumpster. Only one of the reported incidents describes a safety monitor attempting to intervene.