About AutoPilotWatch

Our Mission

We believe the public deserves transparent, comprehensive data about autonomous vehicle safety.

Autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles are transforming how we travel. But with that transformation comes real risk — and the public has a right to understand that risk through clear, accessible data. AutoPilotWatch exists to bridge the gap between raw government filings and meaningful public understanding.

We take fragmented, technical regulatory data and turn it into searchable, browsable, and downloadable information that journalists, researchers, policymakers, and everyday people can actually use. No paywalls. No spin. Just data.

Why AutoPilotWatch Exists

The autonomous vehicle industry moves fast. New features ship via over-the-air updates, new companies enter the market, and regulations struggle to keep pace. Meanwhile, the safety data that should inform public debate is buried in government databases, scattered across multiple agencies, and presented in formats that require technical expertise to interpret.

AutoPilotWatch was created to solve this problem. We believe that informed public discourse about autonomous vehicles requires accessible, comprehensive safety data. Whether you're a journalist writing about a Tesla crash, a researcher studying AV policy, a policymaker drafting regulations, or a consumer considering a vehicle purchase — you deserve data you can actually use.

What We Track

AutoPilotWatch is the most comprehensive public database of autonomous vehicle safety data in the United States. Our database currently includes:

Data Sources

All of our data comes from official U.S. government sources. We don't scrape news articles or rely on crowdsourced reports — we go directly to the regulatory filings:

• NHTSA Standing General Order (SGO) Reports — The cornerstone of our database. Mandatory crash reporting for vehicles equipped with ADS and Level 2 ADAS systems, effective since June 2021.
• NHTSA Consumer Complaints Database — Consumer-submitted complaints about autonomous driving features, including phantom braking, unexpected acceleration, and other ADAS/ADS failures.
• NHTSA Investigations & Recalls — Vehicle recalls and formal defect investigations related to autonomous driving software and hardware.
• NHTSA Safety Ratings (NCAP) — New Car Assessment Program crash test ratings, providing context on overall vehicle crashworthiness.

What Makes Us Different

There are other sites tracking aspects of AV safety — and we respect their work. But AutoPilotWatch fills a unique niche:

• Comprehensive, not single-manufacturer: Unlike sites focused solely on Tesla (such as TeslaDeaths.com), we track all 60 manufacturers reporting under SGO — from Waymo to Cruise to Aurora to Zoox and beyond.
• Government data, not news scraping: We use official NHTSA filings, not media reports. This gives us systematic, comparable data across all manufacturers.
• Multi-dimensional:We don't just count crashes. We provide manufacturer rankings, vehicle breakdowns, state-level analysis, complaint tracking, recall monitoring, and investigation status — all in one place.
• Downloadable and open: All our processed data is freely available for download. Build on it, analyze it, challenge it.
• Data journalism: Beyond raw data, we publish in-depth analysis articles that interpret the data, identify patterns, and provide context that raw numbers alone cannot convey.

Our Approach to Data

We believe in presenting data honestly, even when it's inconvenient or doesn't fit a clean narrative. Our guiding principles:

• Transparency: We document our methodology in detail, including known limitations and caveats.
• Context over headlines: Raw numbers without context are misleading. We always note fleet size differences, reporting thresholds, and other confounding factors.
• No advocacy: We are not anti-AV or pro-AV. We believe autonomous vehicles have the potential to save lives, but the technology must be held to high safety standards.
• Corrections welcome: If we get something wrong, we want to know. Contact us at info@thedataproject.ai with any corrections.

Independence

AutoPilotWatch is an independent project. We are not funded by, affiliated with, or endorsed by any vehicle manufacturer, technology company, lobbying group, or government agency. We have no financial relationship with Tesla, Waymo, Cruise, General Motors, or any other company whose data appears on this site. Our analysis is based solely on publicly available government data.

AutoPilotWatch is a project of TheDataProject.ai, which builds public-interest data tools across healthcare, transportation, finance, and other sectors. Our portfolio of 60+ data-driven websites demonstrates our commitment to making public data accessible.

How to Use This Site

AutoPilotWatch offers several ways to explore the data:

• Browse all incidents — Search and filter the full database of SGO crash reports
• Manufacturer rankings — Compare incident counts, fatalities, and fleet composition across all 60 manufacturers
• Vehicle models — Drill into specific makes and models
• State-level data — See which states have the most AV incidents and why
• Consumer complaints — Read real NHTSA complaints about AV features
• Recalls — Track AV-related safety recalls
• Dashboard — Interactive charts and trend analysis
• Analysis — In-depth data journalism and investigations
• Tools — Interactive safety tools and calculators
• Downloads — Download all our data for your own analysis

For Journalists & Researchers

If you're a journalist working on a story about autonomous vehicle safety, we're happy to provide data, context, and analysis. We believe informed reporting makes everyone safer. Here's how we can help:

• Custom data queries and analysis for your story
• Context on methodology and data limitations
• Background briefings on AV safety trends
• All our processed data files are free to download and use

Contact

Questions, corrections, data requests, or media inquiries? We'd love to hear from you. Visit our contact page or reach out via GitHub.