Waymo has responded to questions from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) as part of the regulator’s investigation into a January crash in which a robotaxi struck a child at low speed.
An initial batch of documents was posted to NHTSA’s website on Friday morning after TechCrunch inquired about them earlier in the week. The agency told TechCrunch that it is “reviewing other responses and will publish them in the investigation file upon completion.”
The responses from Waymo that were available at the time this article was published were entirely redacted, citing “confidential business information.” While the information is redacted, the posted responses signal that the investigation is progressing after Waymo was granted extra time to prepare them.
NHTSA asked for a wide swath of information about how Waymo determines speed limits in school zones, whether the company has received any complaints about how its robotaxis behave around schools, and for documentation about Waymo’s software, among other things.
The crash in question occurred on January 23 in Santa Monica, California. One of Waymo’s Jaguar I-Pace robotaxis was traveling near a school when a 9-year-old girl stepped into the street. The robotaxi was traveling 17 miles per hour, but it braked and reduced its speed to six miles per hour before colliding with the student “near its front-right headlight assembly,” according to a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released in March.
