AUSTIN (Nexstar) \u2014 During a three-hour discussion on autonomous vehicles in Tuesday morning’s Texas Senate Transportation Committee hearing, critiques of the driverless technology were few and far-between.<\/p>\n
“This is quite a success Texas has led because this effort will be commonplace in 10 years,” State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, said.<\/p>\n
State Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, immediately followed up asking Bettencourt how he felt about AVs.<\/p>\n
“I love it. I would say how much I love it, but I don’t want to offend you,” Bettencourt replied.<\/p>\n
A primary reason for Bettencourt’s giddiness \u2014 new data from both the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) suggesting a relatively low number of reported complaints and crashes involving autonomous vehicles.<\/p>\n
At the end of May, the state implemented reporting reforms passed in 2025<\/a> to increase transparency on how many AVs are operating in the Lone Star State and created a dedicated complaint portal on their website.<\/p>\n In the three months since, the DMV has received 42 complaints about the 1,500-plus AVs registered in the state. Three were dismissed because they were off-topic \u2014 including an Arizona complaint, a payroll dispute and a complaint involving a car door opening into another vehicle.<\/p>\n “Looking at those 39, what should the people of Texas be most concerned about?” State Sen. and Committee Chair Tan Parker, R-Flower Mound, asked.<\/p>\n “The majority of what the department has received to date oftentimes relates to what I would say is the vehicle’s being ‘overly courteous,'” Corrie Thompson, the director of the Enforcement Division at the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles, said.<\/p>\n Thompson noted common complaints include not going fast enough after a light turns green or stopping due to a pedestrian in the median that may not be actively crossing the road.<\/p>\n “Out of these 42, there’s really no serious complaint?” Bettencourt asked.<\/p>\n “Not that I’ve seen to date, sir,” Thompson replied.<\/p>\n According to DPS, 16 autonomous vehicle crashes have been reported this year. However, the agency said the autonomous vehicle was found not at fault in 12 of those crashes, and the three crashes it identified as at fault involved vehicles with safety drivers behind the wheel.<\/p>\n Black marks for AVs<\/p>\n The lack of reports does not mean driverless vehicles have not had incidents. Earlier this month, a Waymo struck a pedestrian in Dallas \u2014 after the pedestrian had first been struck by an SUV pushing the victim into the path of the Waymo. The victim died as a result of their injuries.<\/p>\n During the hearing, no lawmaker tried to pin the death on Waymo \u2014 but did question why the DMV had found out about what happened through news reports and not directly through the company. Chandler Ludwick, the Southwest Policy Manager for Waymo, said he informed the DMV \u2014 and other major stakeholders \u2014 the next morning, but did not immediately report it since it had happened in the overnight hours.<\/p>\n Waymo also had an incident during the deadly West Sixth Street shooting in Austin on March 1 \u2014 briefly blocking medical first responders.<\/a><\/p>\n “28 seconds, approximately,” Ludwick said. “We’re very fortunate that Austin officials said that it did not have noticeable impact on patient outcomes, but regardless, we need to be better than that.”<\/p>\n A representative from the Austin Police Department also testified \u2014 echoing concerns about AV accountability the department shared with KXAN Investigates in their <\/a>Driverless<\/a> series.<\/a><\/p>\n