# How many people have robots killed?

**Verdict:** No one has ever been killed by a driverless car - not on DEPLOY's verified record, and not in any public record we know of. One person has been killed by a car driving itself with a human safety monitor present: Elaine Herzberg, struck by an Uber ATG test vehicle in Tempe, Arizona in 2018, in a case where the safety operator was criminally charged and pleaded guilty. Every other death the headlines call a "self-driving" fatality happened with a human driving a car in a driver-assist mode (Tesla Autopilot or Full Self-Driving), and in the road cases the driver was charged.

**Summary:** 0 driverless (no human aboard) · 1 autonomous mode with a safety operator aboard · 3 driver-assist (a human driving) individually verified · 14 industrial / surgical (walled) · 18 total verified fatal events.

Counts render from the verified DEPLOY incident record. [How we verify](/methodology.md).

## The three operational classes

Road fatalities split three ways by who or what was in control.

| Operational class | Count | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Driverless (no human aboard) | 0 | The autonomous driving system was solely in control, with no human in the vehicle. |
| Autonomous mode, safety monitor aboard | 1 | The vehicle was driving itself in autonomous/test mode with a human safety operator present to intervene. |
| Driver-assist (a human was driving) | 3 | A human was driving with a Level 2 driver-assist system (Autopilot or Full Self-Driving class) engaged. The human is the driver. |

### Driverless, no human aboard

None on record. There are zero fatalities on the DEPLOY record from a car operating fully autonomously with no human in the vehicle. This is honest absence: the count is zero because the verified record holds no such event.

### Autonomous mode, safety monitor aboard

| Date | Fatal event | Model / operator / place |
|---|---|---|
| 2018-03-18 | [Uber ATG self-driving test vehicle struck and killed pedestrian Elaine Herzberg in Tempe, Arizona - the first pedestrian death caused by an autonomous vehicle (2018)](/incidents/uber-atg-herzberg-tempe-2018.md) | [Uber ATG Self-Driving Vehicle (Volvo XC90)](/models/uber-atg-xc90.md), [Uber ATG](/companies/uber-atg.md) |

### Driver-assist, a human was driving

| Date | Fatal event | Model / operator / place |
|---|---|---|
| 2023-11-28 | [Tesla Model Y on FSD struck and killed pedestrian Johna Story on Arizona highway, first known FSD pedestrian fatality](/incidents/fatality-2023-11-28-tesla.md) | [Tesla](/companies/tesla.md) |
| 2026-06-19 | [Tesla driver charged with manslaughter after FSD crash into Texas home kills woman](/incidents/fatality-2026-06-19-tesla.md) | [Tesla](/companies/tesla.md) |
| 2026-06-28 | [First recorded Tesla Semi fatal crash kills two people in Nevada](/incidents/fatality-2026-06-28-tesla.md) | [Semi](/models/tesla-semi.md), [Tesla](/companies/tesla.md) |

**The evidence-tier fence:** DEPLOY records 3 driver-assist fatalities individually verified. That is not the total number of driver-assist-involved deaths in the United States. Under its Standing General Order, NHTSA aggregates crashes reported by manufacturers when a Level 2 driver-assist system was reportedly engaged, a set that runs into the hundreds and includes fatalities DEPLOY has not individually verified. Those NHTSA figures are cited at a reported tier, alongside our verified count, never merged into it. Our number is smaller because every row in it is individually verified. Source: [NHTSA Standing General Order crash reporting](https://www.nhtsa.gov/laws-regulations/standing-general-order-crash-reporting).

## Factory and industrial robots (a separate chapter)

Factory and caged industrial machinery, and surgical devices, are robots, but they are not autonomous mobility. They answer the title honestly: factory robots have killed workers since 1979. But they are a different kind of machine under a different safety regime (OSHA, not NHTSA), so DEPLOY keeps them in their own chapter and never blends them into the road-vehicle counts above. The record begins with the two foundational cases: Robert Williams (1979) and Kenji Urada (1981).

| Date | Fatal event | Model / operator / place |
|---|---|---|
| 2001-12-29 | [OSHA: Worker asphyxiated after robot started up in un-locked-out cell at JR Wheel (2001)](/incidents/osha-jr-wheel-robot-cell-asphyxia-fatality-2001.md) | - |
| 2003-12-13 | [OSHA: Heat-treat operator caught and killed by robotic lifting arm between oven and quench tank at Keihin IPT (2003)](/incidents/osha-keihin-robotic-lifting-arm-fatality-2003.md) | - |
| 2004-03-30 | [OSHA: Worker killed by industrial robot after entering barricaded work cell at Getrag (2004)](/incidents/osha-getrag-industrial-robot-fatality-2004.md) | - |
| 2006-07-24 | [OSHA: Worker crushed between robotic arm and workstation frame at Alliance Tech Systems (2006)](/incidents/osha-alliance-tech-robotic-arm-fatality-2006.md) | - |
| 2007-05-13 | [OSHA: Worker struck by robotic arm while troubleshooting injection-molding machine, later dies, at Lenco (2007)](/incidents/osha-lenco-robotic-arm-fatality-2007.md) | - |
| 2009-07-21 | [OSHA: Worker crushed by robotic palletizer arms after entering active cell at Golden State Foods (2009)](/incidents/osha-golden-state-foods-robotic-palletizer-fatality-2009.md) | - |
| 2012-12-15 | [OSHA: Worker struck from behind and killed by transfer robot inside work cell at Sodecia Sterling Heights (2012)](/incidents/osha-sodecia-transfer-robot-fatality-2012.md) | - |
| 2013-03-07 | [OSHA: Maintenance worker struck and killed by robotic drilling/tapping machine at Martinrea Hopkinsville (2013)](/incidents/osha-martinrea-robotic-drill-fatality-2013.md) | - |
| 2016-06-18 | [OSHA: Temporary worker Regina Elsea crushed to death by assembly-line robot at Ajin USA auto-parts plant (2016)](/incidents/osha-ajin-elsea-robot-crushing-fatality-2016.md) | - |
| 2021-01-14 | [OSHA: Worker crushed and killed by Okura robotic palletizer arm at Ambrose Sales (2021)](/incidents/osha-ambrose-okura-palletizer-fatality-2021.md) | - |
| 2022-09-01 | [OSHA: Worker fatally crushed by spot-welding robot during maintenance at Unipres Southeast (2022)](/incidents/osha-unipres-spot-welding-robot-fatality-2022.md) | - |
| 2023-11-10 | [Patient death during Epione-assisted liver cancer ablation procedure in France](/incidents/fatality-2023-11-10-quantum-surgical.md) | [Epione](/models/epione.md), [Quantum Surgical](/companies/quantum-surgical.md) |
| 2024-02-22 | [OSHA: Worker crushed to death by robotic arm inside conveyor cage at Markman Peat Corp (2024)](/incidents/osha-markman-peat-robotic-arm-crushing-fatality-2024.md) | - |
| 2024-12-02 | [OSHA: 18-year-old machine operator killed by robotic arm during sensor maintenance (2024)](/incidents/osha-traffic-materials-robotic-arm-fatality-2024.md) | - |

## Dataset

Every reviewed, non-retracted fatal event above is available as a citable dataset (CC-BY-4.0): [JSON](/v1/datasets/robot-fatalities) · [CSV](/v1/datasets/robot-fatalities?format=csv).

## See also

- [Robot recalls and safety incidents](/robot-recalls-and-safety-incidents.md): the full verified ledger.
- [Where can you actually ride a robotaxi in 2026?](/where-can-you-ride-a-robotaxi.md)
- [What happened to Cruise?](/what-happened-to-cruise.md)
- [All incidents](/incidents.md) · [Fatal incidents](/incidents?kind=fatality)

_Verified incident counts; complaints and unfiled reports are tracked separately. Retracted duplicates are suppressed from the counts but stay reachable at their own URL._

_API: GET /v1/datasets/robot-fatalities · canonical URL: /how-many-people-have-robots-killed_