There is no driver to exchange information with, no one to admit fault at the scene, and no insurance card handed through a window. That is the first thing people notice after a collision with a robotaxi, and it is why a Daly City Personal Injury Attorney approaches these cases differently from a routine rear-end crash. The liable party is a corporation with engineers, in-house counsel, and a complete sensor recording of the incident. The good news for injured people is that the recording exists at all. The problem is getting it before it becomes someone else’s exhibit.

Who do you sue when there is no driver?

The company operating the vehicle, and often the company that built the driving system, which in Waymo’s case are the same corporate family. Waymo LLC is an Alphabet subsidiary, so the claim runs against a well-capitalized business rather than an individual motorist.

Two theories usually run side by side. The first is ordinary negligence in how the vehicle was operated, maintained, and deployed on a given street. The second is strict product liability, a California doctrine established in Greenman v. Yuba Power Products (1963) holding that a manufacturer is liable for injuries caused by a defective product regardless of whether it was careless. Under Barker v. Lull Engineering (1978), a design defect can be proven either by showing the product failed to perform as an ordinary consumer would expect, or by showing the risk of the design outweighs its benefits. Software behavior at an intersection fits both tests.

What evidence exists after a driverless crash, and how fast can it vanish?

Far more than in a human-driver case, and it sits entirely in the defendant’s hands. An autonomous vehicle records lidar point clouds, multiple camera angles, radar returns, GPS position, speed, braking inputs, and the system’s own object classification decisions in the seconds before impact. That data can show what the vehicle saw, what it labeled you as, and when it decided to brake.

Send a written litigation hold letter, sometimes called a spoliation letter, within days. California does not recognize spoliation of evidence as its own lawsuit after Cedars-Sinai Medical Center v. Superior Court (1998), but a court can impose evidentiary sanctions and instruct the jury under CACI 204 that it may infer destroyed evidence was unfavorable to the party who lost it. That instruction only helps if a preservation demand went out early.

What must an AV company report after a collision in California?

Two separate reporting obligations exist, and both create records you can request. Companies holding California DMV autonomous vehicle permits must report any collision involving the AV to the DMV within 10 days, using Form OL 316, under Title 13 of the California Code of Regulations section 227.48. The DMV publishes these reports on its website.

At the federal level, NHTSA’s Standing General Order 2021-01 requires manufacturers and operators of automated driving systems to report qualifying crashes, and the agency publishes that incident data in downloadable form. Permit holders must also carry at least $5 million in insurance or a surety bond under 13 CCR 227.04, which means minimum-limits problems that plague ordinary auto cases rarely apply here.

What if you were a passenger inside the vehicle?

Your position is generally stronger on liability and more complicated on procedure. A paying passenger has no comparative fault to argue about, and California treats companies transporting passengers for hire as common carriers under Civil Code section 2100, which imposes a heightened duty of care rather than ordinary reasonable care.

The complication is the rider agreement. AV ride-hailing terms of service have historically included arbitration provisions with a limited opt-out window, which can push a personal injury claim out of court entirely. Pull up the version of the terms you accepted and have them reviewed before filing anything. Passenger service in California is separately regulated by the CPUC, which authorized fared driverless service in San Francisco in August 2023.

Why does a Daly City Personal Injury Attorney matter in a San Francisco robotaxi case?

Because the county line runs through the middle of this problem. Waymo’s Bay Area service territory has expanded south of San Francisco along the Peninsula and onto freeways, so a single trip can begin in Daly City and end in the Mission. Where the collision happened determines whether the case belongs in San Mateo County Superior Court in Redwood City or San Francisco Superior Court, and those venues do not value cases the same way. Waymo’s corporate presence in Santa Clara County adds a third possibility.

The deadline is the same either way. Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1 gives you two years from the date of injury for a personal injury claim, and section 338 gives three years for property damage. If a Muni vehicle, a city-maintained roadway condition, or a public employee contributed to the crash, a government claim must be presented within six months under Government Code section 911.2, and that shorter clock has ended more viable cases than any other rule in California injury law.

Robotaxi collisions are still new enough that most drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians have no idea what evidence exists or how quickly to demand it. If you were hit by an autonomous vehicle anywhere on the Peninsula or in San Francisco, speak with a Daly City Personal Injury Attorney before giving a statement to the company’s claims team. The sensor data that decides your case already exists, and the sooner someone demands it in writing, the harder it is for that record to become incomplete.