Test drivers at Waymo and Zoox suffered more than two dozen injuries in 2024 and 2025, US Occupational Safety and Health Administration records show. Hard braking by the autonomous vehicles is the main cause. The longest documented absence lasted 175 days.
Key takeaways
- Waymo: 16 injuries in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix, 2024–2025
- Zoox: up to 8 injuries linked to hard braking
- Longest absence: 175 days after an August 2025 incident in Los Angeles
- Dominant injuries: whiplash?whiplash: A neck injury caused by a rapid back-and-forth snap of the head, typical of sudden braking or a collision., sprains, strains, rib and shoulder pain
- Only sites with 100+ employees must disclose OSHA records
What the OSHA records show
Waymo’s test drivers are formally employed by operator Transdev. Its records list 16 injuries across three cities: five in 2024, eleven in 2025 — nearly all after hard braking.
The lost time is striking. One worker was off the schedule for 157 days after a September 2025 incident in Phoenix. The record is 175 days, after a Los Angeles stop for children in the road.
Zoox: shorter absences, same mechanism
Zoox records show up to eight injuries, with shorter breaks — 16 days of restricted duty after a January stop in San Francisco, 46 days after severe back pain in Las Vegas. Four came after a March recall?recall: A manufacturer’s safety action that calls vehicles back to fix an identified defect, including through a software update. meant to curb unexpected braking.
| Company | Injuries on record | Split by year | Longest absence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Waymo (operator Transdev) | 16 | 5 in 2024, 11 in 2025 | 175 days |
| Zoox | up to 8 | — | 46 days |
Zoox says hard braking is sometimes “unavoidable” and the injuries a “small percentage” of the millions of miles its test fleet has covered. Waymo notes it has driven “tens of millions of miles” with operators behind the wheel.
How many companies actually report
Why it matters
Robotaxis are sold on the promise of removing human error from the road. The OSHA records show the other side of that equation: the path to autonomy is paid for with the health of people behind the wheel during testing.
This is a new category of occupational risk — not a crash, but the machine’s driving style itself, repeated thousands of times a day. Without industry-wide data, neither regulators nor unions can tell whether the problem scales with the fleets.
What’s next
- OSHA data for 2026 is not yet due — the fastest fleet scaling shows up after the March 2027 deadline
- Zoox must show the March recall worked: four injuries came after it shipped
- NHTSA is probing a Waymo collision involving a child, documents filed August 2026
