Just posted to my Forbes column about a moment many people have feared: a robotaxi hitting a child near an elementary school.
The vehicle, operated by Waymo, struck a child in Santa Monica after the child reportedly ran into the street from behind a double-parked SUV during school drop-off hours. According to Waymo, the vehicle detected the child as soon as they emerged, braked hard, and reduced speed from about 17 mph to under 6 mph before impact. The child was able to get up and move to the side of the road, and the vehicle contacted emergency services and remained on scene.
Now the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened a preliminary investigation to determine whether the autonomous system exercised appropriate caution in a school zone — particularly given the presence of children, a crossing guard and double-parked vehicles. These are exactly the kinds of chaotic, high-risk environments that test both human drivers and automated systems.
School zones are nerve-wracking for any parent behind the wheel. The question now isn’t just what happened in this specific case, but what the data will show about how autonomous systems behave in one of the most sensitive driving contexts imaginable.
We’ll know more once the federal investigation runs its course. For now, it appears the child avoided serious harm — and the incident becomes another critical data point in the long road toward safer streets, whether the driver is human or machine.