Test drivers for Waymo and Zoox sustained more than two dozen injuries in 2024 and 2025 caused by hard braking or other sudden movements made by autonomous vehicles, according to a TechCrunch review of data submitted to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration1.
Transdev, which employs and manages Waymo's test drivers, reported 16 injuries tied to Waymo depot locations in three cities, caused by the autonomous software braking hard or swerving suddenly. Zoox reported as many as eight worker injuries linked to hard braking.
Workers have suffered sprains, strains, whiplash, and other conditions, with some sidelined for weeks or months. Test drivers must monitor the system's actions, be prepared to take control, and respond to unexpected acceleration, braking, or turns.
The injury count has risen alongside fleet expansion. Transdev reported five Waymo test driver injuries in 2024 across San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix. That number jumped to 11 in 2025 across the same three markets. Waymo grew its commercial fleet to more than 1,500 vehicles by May 2025; the fleet now exceeds 3,500 vehicles.
Zoox started charging for rides in its purpose-built robotaxi for the first time this month in Las Vegas. Zoox also offers free rides in San Francisco and is testing in Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.. Zoox has reported two robotaxi crashes to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the last eight months in which hard braking for debris resulted in its purpose-built vehicles being rear-ended.
Other autonomous vehicle companies do not appear in the OSHA dataset, though TechCrunch noted they may be exempt. The Waymo and Zoox injuries appear because the companies classify themselves as taxi, limo, or transit services, which OSHA subjects to greater disclosure as "higher-hazard" industries. OSHA only requires establishments with 100 or more employees in these industries to make this information public, meaning test drivers in newer cities where operations have not scaled may have been injured without appearing in the dataset.
Waymo is also preparing to launch its robotaxi service in Munich, with mapping, road tests, regulatory approvals, and a potential public rollout planned for late 2027. Zoox is preparing paid robotaxi rides under a new NHTSA exemption.
ANALYSIS The injury trajectory, from five reported Waymo-linked incidents in 2024 to 11 in 2025, tracks with the fleet more than doubling over the same period. The OSHA reporting thresholds and industry classification rules mean the disclosed figures likely undercount total test-driver injuries across the autonomous vehicle sector. As both Waymo and Zoox push into new cities and begin or expand paid service, the volume of human test-driving hours, and the exposure to abrupt autonomous maneuvers, is set to grow in step with fleet size.