NHTSA Probes Avride Robotaxis After 16 Crashes as Uber Partnership Scales in Texas

New updates have been reported about avride.

Avride faces a formal safety defect investigation from the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration after regulators linked 16 crashes, including one minor injury, to the performance of its autonomous driving system in Texas. The Office of Defects Investigation reports that Avride’s vehicles, all operating with safety monitors onboard, have shown weaknesses in lane changes, responses to adjacent or slow‑moving vehicles, and detection of stationary obstacles.

The probe comes as Avride, a Nebius subsidiary best known for delivery robots, accelerates its robotaxi expansion through a strategic partnership with Uber that includes up to $375 million in committed investments. Avride says it has implemented targeted technical and operational fixes for incidents reported between December 2025 and March 2026 and claims incident frequency is falling as mileage increases, but regulators have already reviewed crash videos and cited multiple lane‑change collisions and at least one impact with a dumpster.

Several crashes occurred in Dallas and Austin, with at least one involving a paying passenger and another where an Avride‑equipped Hyundai Ioniq 5 clipped a parked truck’s open door, causing a minor injury that did not require hospitalization. In a separate December incident, an Avride robotaxi attempting to bypass a parked pickup truck reportedly turned into a neighboring van, damaging both vehicles.

Avride has declined to explain why in‑vehicle safety monitors did not prevent most of the crashes, an issue that heightens regulatory and liability risk as the service scales. The NHTSA action places Avride under the same federal microscope facing other autonomous‑vehicle operators and could influence future deployment timelines, capital needs, insurance costs, and the pace of commercial rollout with Uber in the U.S.