Driverless trucking, as the roadside sees it

Autonomous freight carriers file no passenger crash report, so they are missing from every robotaxi dataset. They are ordinary motor carriers to the federal regulator, which means their trucks get pulled over and inspected like everybody else's — and that record is the only public safety data these companies produce. It describes what inspectors found when they stopped a truck. It does not say whether the truck was driving itself.

Miles filed with the regulator

4.2M

Across 5 carriers and 259 trucks, self-reported on the annual census

Roadside inspections

Producing 9 written violations

Trucks put out of service

1.1% of inspections, against a national average for trucking of roughly one in five

Reportable crashes

None filed by any of these carriers. The federal threshold is a tow-away, an injury or a death

Every autonomous freight carrier, and how often it meets an inspector

Trucks and miles come from each carrier's own annual filing. Inspections and out-of-service orders come from the roadside. The rate column is stops per million self-reported miles — a measure of enforcement attention, not of driving.

Mileage is self-reported on a form filed once a year, so a carrier that filed in March 2025 is describing 2024. Inspection counts cover the trailing two years the federal extract holds.
								Inspected in
Aurora	PITTSBURGH, PA	109	178	1,640,2772024	65	39.6	none	AZ CO MS NM OH TN TX US UT
Kodiak Robotics	MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA	30	40	990,2382024	10	10.1	none	AL KY MS NM OK TX
Gatik AI	FORT WORTH, TX	70	70	785,0002024	7	8.9	none	NE OK
Bot Auto	BROOKSHIRE, TX	16	20	537,9742025	11	20.4	1	TX
Torc Robotics	BLACKSBURG, VA	34	25	276,0512025	2	7.2	none	IN NC
No rows match this filter.

What these numbers can and cannot say

The limit is not a caveat at the bottom; it decides the whole reading.

Nothing in this record says whether a truck was driving itself. These carriers run safety drivers on most miles, the inspection examines the vehicle and its paperwork rather than the software, and the federal forms have no field for automation. A clean inspection record is evidence that the trucks are well maintained and the logs are in order. It is not evidence that the automation drives well, and it would be dishonest to present it as such.

What it does say is worth having. These five carriers were inspected 95 times and had a vehicle or driver placed out of service 1 time — 1.1%, against a national trucking average of roughly twenty per cent. Their equipment is new and their fleets are small, which explains much of that. But it is the first public number of any kind on how these companies present at the roadside.

Zero reportable crashes across 4.2 million miles is a real figure and a thin one. The federal threshold is high — a tow-away, an injury, or a death — so ordinary contact never reaches it, and at this mileage a fleet of careful human drivers would also expect very few.

Every violation an inspector wrote up

Nine of them, across five companies and two years. Small enough to read individually, which is the right way to read it.

A violation is a citation at the roadside, not a court finding. Most are paperwork or equipment items and carry no penalty beyond correction.

Jul 15, 2026	Aurora	39378	Wipers - Inoperative / missing / damaged wipers	no
Jun 8, 2026	Bot Auto	39375A3	Tire-flat and/or audible air leak	no
May 13, 2026	Aurora	39355EB	Air Brake - ABS malfunction lamp defective on trailers manufactured on or after March 1 1998	no
Apr 27, 2026	Gatik AI	39617CPI	Operating a CMV without documentation of a periodic inspection	no
Jan 20, 2026	Bot Auto	39345DLPC	Brake Connections with Leaks - Connection to Power Unit	no
Jan 7, 2026	Aurora	39345B2UV	Brake Hose or Tubing Chafing and/or Kinking Under Vehicle	no
Nov 17, 2025	Torc Robotics	38371H	License (CDL) - CDL or CLP holder possesses a valid medical certificate but is not on file with the issuing state driver's licensing agency as required	no
Oct 9, 2025	Gatik AI	3958F1HOSM	HOS (Manner) - Driver's record of duty status not current to the time shown for last change of duty status. Date and Time:	no
Sep 10, 2024	Gatik AI	39524D	ELD cannot transfer ELD records electronically	no
No rows match this filter.

Why these companies are otherwise invisible

Where freight sits in this product.

Autonomous trucking is regulated as trucking. There is no equivalent of the passenger crash filing that produces most of this site: no standing order report, no state collision form, no disengagement return. A driverless truck company can operate for years and appear in no dataset a robotaxi analyst would think to open.

They do show up on the Texas autonomous vehicle registry, where their trucks are registered by VIN alongside the robotaxis — see the fleet census for what they run and build and origin for where those trucks were assembled. This page is the other half: what happened when somebody stopped one.