Lookup · after the crash
Self-driving car crash lookup Find the company behind the car you saw.
Pick what the car looked like to see which company most likely operated it and what the DMV and the CPUC allow it to do. Then search NHTSA's public crash reports for California by month, company and city. A report shows that the company reported a crash. It does not say who caused it.
Note these before you search
- The month, the time to the minute, and the cityFederal reports leave out the day of the month and the street, so the search runs on the month, the city and the company. The time in the report, to the minute, is usually what tells one report from another.
- The license plate and any company markingThe plate is what each company's first-responder guide uses to identify a car. Waymo also shows its carrier number, TCP 38152A, on the bumpers, which names the company but not the car.
- Whether anyone was in the driver's seatAn empty driver's seat points to a driverless service. A person in the seat may mean a test car with a safety driver, or a car that is not self-driving at all.
After you find a likely report
- Write down the report number and its versionCompanies can file more than one version of a report as they learn more, and the versions can differ. The number lets a lawyer ask for every version and the material behind it.
- Ask the police agency the report names for its collision reportA police collision report must be released to people with a proper interest, including a person injured in the crash, under Vehicle Code section 20012.
- Treat the description as the company's accountThe description in a federal report is written by the company. NHTSA's data dictionary says report data "may be incomplete or unverified." Witnesses, video and the police report can tell a different story.
- Report the crash to the company yourselfWaymo lists a collision line, 1-844-263-9885, an online collision form and a QR code on each front door (Waymo Help Center). Zoox Support takes calls and texts at 1-888-477-5055 (Zoox). Give facts, not a recorded statement about your injuries.
NHTSA collects these reports under its Standing General Order, and it says the program "is not currently a program designed to support normalized, 'apples-to-apples' comparison scorecards of the various technologies," and that its notices are "based on allegations of a crash, rather than verified crashes" (Federal Register, May 26, 2026). Its data dictionary adds that "the same crash may have multiple reports" and "summary incident report data are not normalized." So the lookup shows reports one at a time and never counts or ranks companies.
A Tesla on Autopilot or FSD (Supervised) is a driver-assist car, not a self-driving car under California law, and its crashes go to a different federal file. Our Tesla Autopilot and FSD crash page explains how those claims work.
Step 1 uses the DMV permit-holder lists, the CPUC permit list and the companies' own pages, as checked on October 5, 2026. Step 2 searches a copy of NHTSA's public crash reports for California (current file and 2021 to 2025 archive), refreshed after each monthly release. UC Berkeley's Transportation Injury Mapping System maps California reports since April 28, 2026 with exact locations. The lookup does not log your searches. Wise Law is not affiliated with NHTSA, the DMV, the CPUC, UC Berkeley or any company named here. This page is general information, not legal advice.