AutonomousMedium
Waymo Autonomous Vehicle Reportedly Struck Child Near Elementary School in Santa Monica, California
- Occurred
- Jan 23, 2026
- Published
- Jan 29, 2026
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
A Waymo driverless vehicle reportedly struck a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica, California during school drop-off hours. According to filings with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the child allegedly sustained minor injuries. The vehicle was purportedly operating on Waymo's 5th Generation Automated Driving System without a human safety driver. Waymo reported the incident to federal regulators, who subsequently opened an investigation.
Developers
- Waymo
Deployers
- Waymo
Harmed parties
- Unnamed elementary school student
- Pedestrians
- Minors
- General public
- Educational communities
- Students
Classification
Category confidence: 95%
Severity confidence: 90%
Rationale: Incident involves a self-driving vehicle causing injury, triggering regulatory investigation.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8