By Fernando J. Lopez, Texas Personal Injury Attorney | Updated July 29, 2026
A car rolls through an intersection with nobody steering it and hits you. The first question that hits most people is not about insurance. It is simpler than that. Who do you even sue? When an Uber autonomous vehicle backup driver causes an accident, liability almost never stops with the person sitting in the driver seat. Self-driving car accident liability spreads across several parties at once and that is what makes these files different from ordinary car accidents. The safety driver can be personally responsible. The company running the test fleet usually answers for that same conduct. The vehicle manufacturer and the software developer can land in the case too. At The Lopez Law Group we look at these files the way we look at any serious motor vehicle collision, except the evidence sits on a company server instead of a police lot. This article walks through how fault gets split after a self-driving car accident and what Texas law says about your claim.
Quick Answer: In an uber self driving car accident, the backup driver can be held liable for negligence and may face criminal charges. Under respondeat superior Uber is usually liable for that same conduct because the safety driver is an employee on shift. The vehicle manufacturer or software developer can be liable under product liability law. Texas applies modified comparative fault with a 51 percent bar.
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What Happened in the Tempe Uber Self-Driving Crash
On March 18, 2018, a little before 10:00 at night, Elaine Herzberg was walking a bicycle across Mill Avenue in Tempe, Arizona. A modified Volvo XC90 operated by the Uber Advanced Technologies Group was running in autonomous mode at roughly 39 mph. Rafaela Vasquez sat in the driver seat as the backup driver. Herzberg died from her injuries. That Uber self driving fatality became the first recorded pedestrian death in the United States caused by a self-driving vehicle.
The National Transportation Safety Board investigated and published its findings in report HWY18MH010. A few facts from that report matter more than anything else you will read about this Uber autonomous vehicle crash.
The autonomous system detected an object about 5.6 seconds before impact. It never settled on what that object was. The classification flipped between a vehicle, an unknown object and a bicycle, and each time the label changed the system threw out its prediction of where the object was heading and started over. The software was never designed to account for a person crossing outside a crosswalk. The factory automatic emergency braking built into the Volvo had been switched off while the autonomous driving system was engaged. And in the final second before contact, the system held back braking while it waited to confirm the hazard.
The NTSB listed the probable cause as the failure of the vehicle operator to monitor the road and the autonomous system because she was visually distracted. That single finding is what turned this Uber crash from a technology story into a liability story.
Who Can Be Held Liable in a Self-Driving Car Accident
A normal car accident usually has one obvious defendant. You know who ran the light. Accidents involving autonomous vehicles work differently, because five separate parties can each own a slice of what went wrong. Liability in self-driving car accidents rarely rests on one name. To determine liability you have to look at every party in the chart below before you pick a target, and sorting out autonomous vehicle liability is the first job any lawyer should do on your file.
| Potential Defendant | Legal Theory | What Must Be Proven | Typical Evidence | Applies to Backup Driver Cases? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Backup driver or safety driver | Negligence | Duty of care and breach and causation and damages | In-cabin camera footage and phone records and gaze data | Yes, primary |
| Operator company such as Uber | Respondeat superior and vicarious liability rideshare | Employment relationship and act within scope of work | Employment contract and shift logs | Yes |
| Vehicle manufacturer | Product liability and design defect | A defect existed that made the car unreasonably dangerous | Sensor logs and design documents | Sometimes |
| Software developer | Product liability and failure to warn | The self-driving system failed to classify or brake | Perception logs and code review | Sometimes |
| Fleet owner or registrant | Negligent entrustment and statutory owner duty | Ownership and knowledge of the risk | Registration and maintenance records | Sometimes |
Two or more of these parties often share liability in the same case. That is normal. Liability rules in Texas allow a jury to assign a percentage to each defendant rather than forcing an all-or-nothing answer.
Backup Driver Liability When the Human Behind the Wheel Is at Fault
Safety driver autonomous vehicle role, also called the backup driver self driving car operator: A trained human seated behind the wheel of an autonomous test vehicle whose job is to watch the road and the self-driving system and take manual control the moment the software fails. The role carries a continuous duty of care even while the car drives itself.
Here is the part most people get wrong. A safety driver does not stop being a driver just because the software is engaged. The duty of care autonomous vehicle operators owe does not switch off when the system switches on. Texas courts treat that person as a driver with a steering wheel in front of them and a road in front of that.
Breach looks ordinary once you strip away the technology. Looking down at a phone. Missing a takeover prompt. Reacting a full second late. Trusting the autonomous driving features to handle something they were never built to handle. Any of those can support a finding of autonomous vehicle negligence.
Then comes causation. Proximate cause self driving car analysis asks a plain question. Would an alert operator have had enough time and enough road to brake or steer and avoid the accident? Where the answer is yes, backup driver liability is on the table. Where the answer is no, the case shifts toward the software and the hardware. Comparative negligence autonomous vehicle rules then tell a jury how to split those percentages between the human driver and everyone else.
Criminal Charges Against a Safety Driver Versus a Civil Claim
Families are often surprised to learn that two separate cases can come out of one autonomous backup driver accident, and that they run on different tracks.
Rafaela Vasquez was charged in September 2020 with negligent homicide. The case resolved in July 2023 when she pleaded guilty to endangerment and received a term of probation. Uber was never criminally charged. The Yavapai County Attorney reviewed the file in March 2019 and concluded there was no basis for criminal liability against the company.
| Criminal Case | Civil Claim | |
|---|---|---|
| Who brings it | The state or county prosecutor | The injured person or the family |
| Burden of proof | Beyond a reasonable doubt | More likely than not |
| Possible outcome | Probation or jail or a fine | Money damages |
| What the family receives | Nothing directly | Compensation for medical bills and lost wages and vehicle damage and pain |
A conviction is not required for you to win a civil claim. An acquittal does not end one either. A negligent homicide self driving car charge belongs to the state. So do vehicular manslaughter charges. Safety driver conduct gets judged twice under two different standards and only one of those cases pays your medical bills. Your claim belongs to you.
Can You Sue Uber for a Self Driving Car Accident?
Yes. And the strongest path usually runs through the employment relationship rather than straight at the company.
Respondeat superior is the doctrine that puts an employer on the hook for what an employee does on the clock. A safety driver working a scheduled shift in a company test vehicle is about as clean a fit for that rule as you will find. If the operator was negligent, Uber answers for that negligence. This is the same vicarious liability rideshare principle that applies when a regular driver injures someone during a fare.
Direct claims stack on top of the vicarious one. Negligent hiring. Thin training. Weak supervision of a driver who had already shown attention problems. A corporate decision to disable a factory safety feature during autonomous vehicle testing. Each of those is a theory aimed at the company itself rather than the person in the seat.
There is a practical reason plaintiffs name the company in a self-driving accident. Liability coverage on a commercial test fleet runs into layers of excess insurance. No individual operator carries anything close to that. In the Tempe matter the family and Uber resolved the civil side within about two weeks of the crash and the terms were never made public. Fast and quiet is the pattern in these liability cases, which is one more reason to have a rideshare accident claim evaluated before anyone signs anything.
When the Car Itself Is the Defendant
Product liability shifts the question. Instead of asking who drove badly, you ask what was built badly. Product liability self driving cars claims run in Texas under Chapter 82 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, and section 82.003 limits when a seller who did not manufacture the vehicle can be pulled into the case at all.
Three defect theories come up in an autonomous car crash:
- Design defect. The perception stack could not classify a pedestrian pushing a bicycle. That is a design problem in autonomous driving systems, not a driver problem.
- Manufacturing defect. A sensor or actuator left the plant out of spec.
- Failure to warn. The operator was never told that factory emergency braking was suppressed while the autonomous system had control.
Winning a claim against a vehicle manufacturer or a car manufacturer software partner comes down to four evidence categories. Sensor and perception logs. Disengagement records showing how often the system handed control back. Internal safety testing memos. The software update history filed after the crash. Getting to that material usually takes what is product liability analysis paired with engineers and accident reconstruction specialists who can read raw telemetry.
Self-Driving Car Accident Versus Traditional Car Accident
The injuries look the same. The case does not. A traditional car accident is built on documents that already exist in public hands. A self-driving car crash is built on data that belongs to the company you are suing.
| Element | Traditional Car Accident | Self-Driving Car Accident |
|---|---|---|
| Likely number of defendants | One or two | Three to five |
| Key evidence | Police report and witness statements and photos | Sensor logs and perception data and disengagement records and in-cabin video |
| Who controls the evidence | Public agencies | The defendant company |
| Time pressure on evidence | Moderate | Severe, because telemetry gets overwritten |
| Insurance layer | Personal auto policy | Commercial fleet policy plus excess liability insurance |
| Governing law | Settled negligence doctrine | Negligence plus product liability law plus new autonomous vehicle liability laws |
That third row is the one that decides cases. In a normal car accident the proof sits with the police. In an autonomous vehicle accident it sits with the party that has every reason to let it expire. When an accident involves an uber autonomous car or any other fully autonomous vehicles being tested on public roads, the clock on that data starts the moment the airbags fire.
What to Do After an Accident Involving a Self-Driving Car
Take these steps in order if you were injured by a self-driving car or a fully autonomous test vehicle:
- Call 911 and make sure an official crash report gets started at the scene.
- Photograph the roof sensor array and the door decals and the fleet number, not only the dents. Those markings identify which company owns the driverless car.
- Get medical care the same day and keep every bill and record from the emergency room through physical therapy.
- Write down whether a person was in the driver seat and what that person was doing when you first saw the vehicle.
- Collect witness names and numbers before anyone leaves.
- Say nothing recorded to the operator company or to an insurance adjuster.
- Send a written evidence preservation letter immediately, because sensor data and cabin video rotate out on a schedule and nobody is required to keep them for you.
- Call an accident lawyer who has handled accidents involving self-driving vehicles and knows what to demand in the first thirty days. Most car accident lawyers have never worked an uber self-driving accident and will not know what to ask for.
Step 7 is the one nearly everyone skips. It is also the step that most often decides whether the case can be proven at all.
How Texas Law Applies to a Self-Driving Car Accident Claim
Texas rules that shape autonomous vehicle liability
- Two-year statute of limitations. Section 16.003 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code gives you two years from the date of the crash to file most injury lawsuits. Miss it and the claim is gone no matter how strong it was.
- Modified comparative fault with a 51 percent bar. Section 33.001 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code blocks recovery entirely if you are found more than 50 percent at fault. Below that line your award drops by your percentage. This is the rule that governs how a jury splits car accident liability between a backup driver and a manufacturer and you.
- Wrongful death and survival claims. Sections 71.002 and 71.021 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code control who may file after a fatal crash and what the estate may recover. The Texas wrongful death statute of limitations runs on its own clock and families lose time waiting on a criminal case to finish.
- Product claims. Chapter 82 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, including the innocent seller protection in section 82.003.
- Texas automated vehicle statute. Sections 545.451 through 545.456 of the Texas Transportation Code authorize automated motor vehicles on Texas roads, address who counts as the operator of an automated driving system for enforcement purposes and set insurance requirements for these vehicles.
The Numbers Behind Autonomous Vehicle Testing and Texas Crashes
| Statistic | Year | Source | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| The autonomous system detected an object 5.6 seconds before impact and never classified it correctly | 2019 | NTSB Report HWY18MH010 | Shows the software had time to react and did not |
| Factory automatic emergency braking was disabled while the vehicle drove itself | 2019 | NTSB Report HWY18MH010 | Points liability at a corporate configuration decision |
| Texas has not gone a single day without a traffic death since November 7, 2000 | Ongoing | TxDOT | Frames how routine fatal crashes are on Texas roads |
| Reported crashes involving vehicles with automated driving systems | [pull current figure] | NHTSA Standing General Order incident reporting | Tracks how often accidents involving autonomous vehicles are now reported |
| Total Texas traffic fatalities in the most recent reporting year | [pull current figure] | TxDOT Crash Records Information System | Provides the local baseline for any Texas crash claim |
Common Mistakes That Sink These Cases
- Assuming nobody is liable because nobody was driving. The claim never gets filed and the two-year deadline runs out.
- Suing only the safety driver. Recovery caps at one personal policy while the company with real coverage walks away.
- Waiting weeks to demand evidence preservation. Sensor logs and cabin video cycle out and the best proof of what caused the crash disappears.
- Giving a recorded statement to the company insurance adjuster. One offhand line about not looking becomes a comparative fault argument against you.
- Skipping medical care because the pain seemed minor. A treatment gap turns into a defense argument that the collision did not cause your injuries.
- Accepting a first offer before anyone reads the software data. You settle a product liability case at normal car accident value.
- Treating this like a routine car accident claim. The wrong experts get hired and the defect theory never gets built.
What We See in These Files
“In our experience handling autonomous vehicle and rideshare crash cases across Texas, the fight is almost never about whether the car hit someone. It is about who had the last real chance to stop it. That answer lives in the sensor data and the in-cabin video and both of those sit on a company server that nobody is obligated to keep forever.” Fernando J. Lopez, The Lopez Law Group
When to Call a Lawyer
Timing matters more in these cases than in almost any other kind of collision claim. In a two-car wreck on US-83 or IH-2 the evidence sits in a police file that will still be there next month. In a self-driving crash the evidence sits in a data center owned by the company you are about to sue. Every week you wait is a week that data can age out.
Call an attorney if any of the following describes your situation:
- Someone was killed or permanently hurt in a crash involving an autonomous vehicle.
- A backup driver was present and what that person was doing is in question.
- The operator company has already reached out to you.
- An insurance adjuster is asking for a recorded statement.
- Medical bills are stacking up while everyone argues over responsibility for the accident.
- The crash involved any commercial fleet vehicle.
The Lopez Law Group handles these claims across Texas on a contingency fee, so you owe no attorney fee unless we recover for you. Call (956) 968-7800 for a free case review.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is liable in a self-driving car accident?
Liability in a self-driving car accident depends on what failed. The safety driver can be liable for negligence. The operator company is usually liable for that same conduct through respondeat superior. The vehicle manufacturer or software developer can be liable under product liability law when the system itself was defective. Often more than one party shares fault, and a Texas jury assigns each a percentage.
Can you sue Uber for a self driving car accident?
Yes. You can sue Uber for a self driving car accident, and most claims proceed through vicarious liability because the backup driver was an employee working a scheduled shift. Direct claims against the company can also be brought for negligent hiring or training or supervision or for corporate decisions about how the fleet was configured and tested.
Is the backup driver liable when a self-driving car causes an accident?
A backup driver can absolutely be held liable. The law treats a safety driver as a driver with a continuing duty to watch the road even while the software steers. If an alert operator would have braked in time and this one did not, that failure supports a negligence finding against the person in the seat.
What happened in the Tempe Uber crash that killed Elaine Herzberg?
On March 18, 2018, an Uber test vehicle in autonomous mode struck Elaine Herzberg as she walked a bicycle across Mill Avenue in Tempe, Arizona. She died from her injuries. The NTSB found the system detected an object 5.6 seconds before impact but never classified it correctly and the operator was visually distracted.
Was Rafaela Vasquez convicted?
Rafaela Vasquez, the backup driver in the Tempe crash, was charged with negligent homicide in September 2020. In July 2023 she pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of endangerment and received probation rather than prison. Uber itself faced no criminal charges after the Yavapai County Attorney declined to pursue the company in March 2019.
Can a safety driver face criminal charges for a self-driving car crash?
Yes. A prosecutor can bring negligent homicide or vehicular manslaughter charges against a safety driver whose inattention contributed to a death. The criminal case is separate from any civil claim. You do not need a conviction to recover damages and a dismissal does not block your lawsuit.
Is the car manufacturer liable in a self-driving car accident?
A car manufacturer can be liable when a design defect or a manufacturing defect or a failure to warn contributed to the crash. Proving it takes sensor logs and internal testing records rather than the usual police report, which is why these accident liability cases move slowly and require technical experts early.
How is a self-driving car accident different from a traditional car accident claim?
A traditional car accident claim is built from a police report and witness statements. A self-driving accident is built from telemetry the defendant controls and can overwrite. There are also more defendants, more insurance layers and an added product liability question that never comes up in ordinary car accident cases.
How long do I have to file a self driving car accident lawsuit in Texas?
Section 16.003 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code gives you two years from the date of the crash for most injury claims. Wrongful death claims run on a related two-year clock. Waiting is risky for a second reason, because the electronic evidence in an autonomous vehicle case can be gone long before the deadline.
What is my self-driving car accident case worth?
Case value turns on the severity of your injuries and your medical costs and lost wages and vehicle damage and how fault gets divided among the defendants. No attorney can promise a number. What we can tell you is that these claims are often worth more than a comparable ordinary collision because commercial fleet policies carry far higher limits.
Talk to Someone Who Handles These Cases
Fault in a self-driving car crash starts with the backup driver and rarely ends there. The company that put the vehicle on the road and the engineers who built the system that failed usually belong in the same case. If you were injured in a self-driving Uber or any driverless test vehicle in Texas, the smartest move is to get the evidence locked down before anyone talks settlement. Our team can look at what happened and tell you honestly whether you have a claim.
Speak with a Texas rideshare accident lawyer about your options.
Call (956) 968-7800 for a free case review. No fee unless we recover. Hablamos español.
This article is general information about Texas law and is not legal advice. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome in any future matter. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and X for the latest updates!
About the Author
Fernando J. Lopez has represented injured Texans for more than 15 years and has recovered over $25 million for his clients. He founded The Lopez Law Group in Weslaco at 206 W. Ferguson Ave and serves clients throughout the Rio Grande Valley and Houston and Dallas and Austin. Attorney Lopez is a member of the State Bar of Texas, has been named to the National Trial Lawyers Top 100 and was recognized by AIOPIA among the 10 Best Personal Injury Attorneys in Southern Texas. His team works in English and Spanish and accepts cases on a contingency fee. Read more about Fernando Lopez.
