Audio By Carbonatix After only a few months on Dallas roads, issues with self-driving cars are piling up with a new federal investigation and a recall announced by Waymo. In the latest win for AI, self-driving cars have been creeping onto urban roadways across the country more and more since the first Waymo trips in Arizona in 2018. Uber rolled out a human-monitored robotaxi service in Dallas last December, with fully automated Waymos launching in a service area roughly stretching from University Park to the Bishop Arts District in February. Last week, however, the Federal Highway Transportation Safety Administration announced an investigation into Avride, the Austin-based robotaxi startup responsible for Uber’s autonomous fleets in Dallas. Avride vehicles have been involved in sixteen crashes in Austin and Dallas since the beginning of December, according to the investigation report. The incidents occurred predominantly in Dallas, where autonomous vehicles are a relatively new phenomenon compared to Austin. Interestingly, the report states that in each incident, a driver was monitoring the autonomous driving system at the time of impact. One crash allegedly resulted in a minor injury, which reportedly did not require hospitalization. In addition to conventional vehicles, Avride robotaxis can be ordered through Uber’s standard ride request in the Uber app. Users are notified if their trip has been picked up by a robotaxi and can switch to a human driver, according to Uber’s Dallas webpage. As part of the inquiry, federal investigators reviewed video footage from each incident. Vehicles were observed merging into neighboring lanes or cars, failing to slow down behind cars and hitting stationary objects in their paths. “These crashes may indicate inappropriate assertiveness and insufficient competence to execute these driving behaviors in a safe manner and may also constitute traffic safety violations,” the report reads. In February, the NHTSA