{"id":479805,"date":"2026-10-28T23:46:26","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T23:46:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/479805\/"},"modified":"2026-10-28T23:46:26","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T23:46:26","slug":"data-shows-driverless-taxis-in-houston-are-safe-but-questions-remain-over-their-regulation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/479805\/","title":{"rendered":"Data shows driverless taxis in Houston are safe, but questions remain over their regulation"},"content":{"rendered":"

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — Autonomous vehicles from different companies have been fully operational in Houston for much of this year, and statistics show they’ve largely done so without any incidents.<\/p>\n

Data acquired by the ABC News Data Team shows there were just 21 crashes involving the vehicles in Houston from September 2025 through August 2026.<\/p>\n

Based on that data, any injuries sustained by passengers in those crashes were minor.<\/p>\n

The news comes on the heels of Tesla’s announcement that it is expanding its Robotaxi service across the City of Houston.<\/p>\n

ABC13 asked Mayor John Whitmire’s Office for comment on the current state of the vehicles in Houston.<\/p>\n

“We monitor them very carefully, but we have no authority to regulate,” Whitmire said about autonomous cars.<\/p>\n

Eyewitness News reported earlier this year that a state law requires autonomous vehicles to be registered with the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It went into effect in late May and requires carriers to follow certain mandates.<\/p>\n

It also gives the state the ability to remove a carrier’s registration if necessary.<\/p>\n

ABC13 asked the agency for numbers related to the first five months of the law being in effect, but was told to submit a public-records request. That request has been submitted.<\/p>\n

While regulating autonomous vehicles is a state responsibility, the City of Austin provides its citizens with an online dashboard showing incidents involving the vehicles.<\/p>\n

ABC13 asked Whitmire’s office whether that could happen in Houston, but we only received the statement above.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2026 KTRK-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — Autonomous vehicles from different companies have been fully operational in Houston for much of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":479806,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[161875,56,58,57],"class_list":["post-479805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-161875","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}