Federal safety regulators are still working through an active investigation into Waymo’s self-driving system after one of the company’s robotaxis struck a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica, California, earlier this year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s own investigation record.

Key Points

• NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation opened Preliminary Evaluation PE26001 on January 28, 2026, five days after the crash.
• The agency’s own summary states the Waymo vehicle was operating autonomously with no safety operator present when it struck the child during morning drop-off hours near a school.
• The child had emerged from behind a parked SUV and sustained minor injuries, per NHTSA’s filing.
• The investigation targets Waymo’s 5th Generation Automated Driving System, the software and sensor suite that controls the company’s driverless fleet.
• NHTSA says it expects to examine whether the vehicle “exercised appropriate caution” given its proximity to the school during pick-up and drop-off hours.

Consistent with how this publication reports on minors involved in traffic incidents, we are not naming or otherwise identifying the child struck in this crash.

What Investigators Are Looking At

Preliminary evaluations are the first formal stage of an NHTSA defect investigation, opened when the agency believes a pattern or specific incident may point to a safety defect. According to the agency’s own case file, investigators intend to look at the automated driving system’s speed and behavior in school zones, whether it adhered to posted limits in the area, and how Waymo responded after the crash.

A preliminary evaluation doesn’t mean regulators have concluded anything was wrong with the vehicle’s software. It means NHTSA has decided the case warrants a closer look than a routine complaint gets. From here, the agency can close the case without action, request additional information and documentation from Waymo as the review continues, escalate to a full engineering analysis, or, if it eventually finds a genuine safety defect, push toward a recall.

NHTSA’s own record does not list a closure date for PE26001, and the agency has not published findings beyond confirming the investigation’s scope and focus. Waymo has continued operating its robotaxi service in the Los Angeles area, including Santa Monica, while the case proceeds.

Robotaxis are still a young enough technology that every serious incident functions as a stress test, not just for the vehicle’s sensors and software but for how honestly a company handles the aftermath. A case involving a child near a school is about as high-stakes a test as this technology is going to face, and it’s still an open question how it holds up.