Attorney Advertising. This page is general information about Georgia law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome, and no outcome is guaranteed or predicted here. The Georgia Personal Injury Attorneys at the Perazzo Law Firm, 1372 Peachtree Street NE, Atlanta, GA 30309.
If a Waymo or another driverless car hit you in Atlanta, Georgia law does not hand the technology a liability shield. Unlike Florida, Georgia keeps a person in the operator frame: O.C.G.A. § 40-1-1 defines an “operator” as any person who drives or is in actual physical control of a motor vehicle “or who causes a fully autonomous vehicle to move or travel with the automated driving system engaged.” Who that person is after a robotaxi crash — and whether they are liable to you — turns on facts and on evidence the company controls. Identifying them early is the first move in the case. [VERIFY: paragraph number for the “operator” definition — the source pack cites § 40-1-1(38); confirm the pinpoint against official O.C.G.A. before printing a subsection number.]
The Perazzo Law Firm handles autonomous-vehicle and robotaxi injury claims for people hurt in Atlanta and across metro Georgia — passengers, other drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians. For a free, confidential case evaluation, call (404) 669-6997 or reach us through our Atlanta contact page. Attorney Jonathan Perazzo is licensed in Georgia, Florida, and Texas.
In Georgia, a Person — Not the Software — Is Still the “Operator”
Most articles get this backwards. Florida’s statute deems the automated driving system itself the legal operator when it is engaged. Georgia did the opposite. Georgia’s definition reaches “any person who causes a fully autonomous vehicle to move or travel with the automated driving system engaged” — the legislature left a responsible person in the picture rather than handing the technology a shield.
Practically, the hard question in an Atlanta robotaxi case is usually not whether someone can be legally responsible. It is who — and proving it with evidence the company controls. Georgia’s appellate courts have not answered who “causes” a driverless vehicle with no occupant to move: the rider who requested the trip, the company’s remote operations team, or the company that deployed and engaged the system. That question is open, which is why these claims are investigated as corporate negligence and product-liability matters, not ordinary two-driver collisions.
Georgia’s regulatory approach is light. There is no Georgia AV permit, no state AV license, no state agency pre-approval, and no required law-enforcement interaction plan, and state law limits local governments from adopting rules that restrict the operating authority the statute grants — so there is no Atlanta-specific robotaxi ordinance to point to. The rules are thinner than most people assume, which puts the weight on the private claim.
Georgia’s Minimum Insurance for a Self-Driving Car Is Far Lower Than People Assume
Ask most people what a robotaxi carries and they will say “a million dollars.” Georgia law does not require that. O.C.G.A. § 40-8-11(a)(4) requires only the limits specified in O.C.G.A. § 40-1-166 — Georgia’s limousine carrier insurance section — and a provision that once raised that floor to 250 percent expired by its own terms on December 31, 2019. Georgia’s AV insurance minimum went down on January 1, 2020, and Georgia has no equivalent to Florida’s $1 million robotaxi requirement.
| Vehicle | Minimum liability coverage Georgia requires |
|---|---|
| Fully autonomous vehicle (§ 40-8-11(a)(4), limits of § 40-1-166) | $100,000 per person / $300,000 per occurrence / $50,000 property damage |
| Ordinary Georgia driver (§ 40-9-37, cross-referencing § 33-7-11) | $25,000 per person / $50,000 per occurrence / $25,000 property damage |
| Autonomous vehicle before Jan. 1, 2020 (250% multiplier — expired) | $250,000 / $750,000 / $125,000 — no longer required |
Read that in both directions. The autonomous-vehicle floor is four times what an ordinary Georgia driver must carry — a real advantage over a crash with a minimally insured motorist. But a statutory minimum is a floor, not a ceiling. The statute says “at a minimum,” and a large fleet operator may carry substantially more. We will not tell you what any specific company’s limits are; that gets established through the claim, not assumed — and neither should you let an adjuster tell you what coverage is available without verifying it.
In a serious-injury or wrongful-death case, $100,000 per person is nowhere near the exposure — which is why these claims get built against the responsible companies and their full assets on corporate negligence and product-liability theories, not as a quick policy-limits demand.
Georgia Has No PIP: Nothing Automatically Starts Paying Your Medical Bills
Georgia is an at-fault state with no no-fault system and no personal injury protection coverage. There is no 14-day treatment rule and no serious-injury threshold to cross before you can pursue pain and suffering — and no first-party benefit sitting behind you either. In week one after an Atlanta crash, your emergency room visit, your imaging, and your first month of physical therapy have nothing automatically paying for them. The practical paths are:
- Your own health insurance, which will typically assert a lien or right of reimbursement out of any recovery.
- MedPay, but only if you actually purchased it on your own auto policy. It is optional in Georgia.
- A letter of protection, where a provider agrees to treat and be paid from a future recovery. Georgia’s 2025 tort reform added disclosure requirements around these, so they need to be handled carefully.
- The at-fault party’s liability coverage — which pays at the end of the claim, not at the beginning.
We cannot promise you that bills get paid, and any firm that does is overselling. What we can do is map your actual coverage on day one so treatment does not stop and the bills are documented to support the claim. The same framework applies to any Georgia crash — see our Atlanta car accident lawyer page.
Georgia vs. Florida: Why the Same Crash Is a Different Case
If you have read anything about Waymo injury claims online, there is a good chance you read about Florida law. On the two points that matter most, Georgia is the opposite.
| Issue | Georgia (Atlanta) | Florida (Miami) |
|---|---|---|
| Who is the legal “operator” | A person who causes the vehicle to move with the system engaged (§ 40-1-1) | The automated driving system itself (Fla. Stat. § 316.85) |
| Minimum robotaxi liability coverage | $100,000 / $300,000 / $50,000 | At least $1,000,000 (Fla. Stat. § 627.749) |
| No-fault / PIP | None | $10,000 PIP |
| Comparative fault bar | Plaintiff 50% or more at fault recovers nothing | Plaintiff more than 50% at fault recovers nothing |
That last row is not a technicality: a person found exactly 50 percent at fault recovers nothing in Georgia and still recovers in Florida. If your crash happened in Florida, our Miami Waymo and self-driving car accident page covers that framework.
You Hailed It on Uber. Does Georgia’s $1 Million Rideshare Coverage Apply?
Waymo rides in Atlanta are currently hailed through the Uber app, which leads many people — adjusters included — to assume Georgia’s $1 million rideshare insurance tier applies. On the text of the statute, that is genuinely unclear.
Georgia’s transportation network company coverage requirement, O.C.G.A. § 33-1-24, attaches its $1 million tier to a “transportation network company driver” — defined as an individual using a personal vehicle. The parallel ride-share provision at O.C.G.A. § 40-1-190 uses the same construction: “an individual who uses his or her personal passenger car.” A driverless robotaxi is neither. Those statutes were written for humans driving their own vehicles and, as far as we can determine, have not been updated for driverless dispatch.
We are not going to resolve that question on a web page, because it is not resolved. No Georgia court appears to have addressed it. A company’s own contractual or fleet coverage may respond regardless of what the statute requires — but that is a private insurance question, answered with the actual policies in hand. [VERIFY: unsettled question — no Georgia authority located; attorney review required before this section publishes.]
Why it matters: this could be the difference between a $1 million layer of coverage and a $100,000 one — not an academic distinction if you have a spinal fusion and six months out of work. It is also time-bound. The Uber exclusivity arrangement in Atlanta is reported to be ending later this decade, with a separate app expected, so “you hail it on Uber” will not be true forever.
A second question gets answered too confidently in both directions: can you name the insurance company itself as a defendant? Georgia’s direct-action rules live in its motor carrier statutes, and 2024 legislation narrowed direct action against a motor carrier’s insurer to limited circumstances. Whether any of that reaches a driverless fleet operator depends first on a threshold question Georgia has not resolved: is a robotaxi operator a “motor carrier” under Georgia law at all? We are not going to tell you that door is shut, and we are not going to tell you it is open. It is a question to be litigated, not assumed. [VERIFY: SB 426 (2024) is motor-carrier-scoped — O.C.G.A. § 40-1-112 and § 40-2-140. Whether an autonomous fleet operator qualifies as a motor carrier is unresolved; do not resolve it in either direction, and confirm the current statutory text before publish.]
Which Company May Be Responsible Depends on What Failed
More than one company stands behind an Atlanta robotaxi ride, and how they divide operational duties is established through contracts and records only they hold at the outset. Not a detail to guess at from a web page — but the failure modes do map to different kinds of defendants:
- Driving or software failure — a misread pedestrian, a mistimed left turn, a failure to yield — points toward whoever operates the automated driving system.
- Maintenance or repair failure — worn brakes, a miscalibrated sensor — points toward whoever performs fleet management.
- Design or manufacturing defect points toward a manufacturer, on a different legal theory entirely.
- A third-party human driver may still be the primary cause, and Georgia apportions fault accordingly.
We are not accusing anyone here. The point is structural: you cannot know which company to pursue until you know what failed, and you cannot know what failed without the vehicle’s own data.
Suing the Manufacturer Is a Different Case With a Different Clock
Under O.C.G.A. § 51-1-11(b), a manufacturer can be strictly liable, regardless of privity, when personal property sold as new is not merchantable and reasonably suited to its intended use and causes injury. You do not have to prove the manufacturer was careless — you have to prove the product was defective. That is a meaningfully different case: different defendant, different theory, different experts.
It also has a different deadline. § 51-1-11(b)(2) contains a ten-year statute of repose: no action may be brought under that subsection more than ten years after the date of the first sale of the product causing the injury. That clock runs from the product, not from your crash. Georgia law also distinguishes manufacturers from mere product sellers, who generally are not subject to strict liability — so a claim against a third-party servicer or maintenance contractor is usually an ordinary negligence claim instead.
How the repose applies to a fleet vehicle that was never sold to a consumer, and how it interacts with software pushed over the air years after first sale, are unresolved questions in autonomous-vehicle litigation. [VERIFY: no Georgia authority located on the repose as applied to fleet vehicles or over-the-air software updates.]
Damages, Fault Sharing, and the Seat-Belt Rule That Just Changed
What may be recoverable
Georgia allows recovery of economic damages (medical expenses, future care, lost wages and earning capacity, property damage) and non-economic damages (pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life). In a fatal case, Georgia splits the claim in two: the family’s claim for the “full value of the life of the decedent” under O.C.G.A. § 51-4-2, and the estate’s separate claim for funeral, medical, and other necessary expenses. Pursuing only one leaves part of the case unmade. No lawyer can tell you a number before investigating, and we will not.
Punitive damages — be realistic
O.C.G.A. § 51-12-5.1 caps most punitive awards at $250,000 under subsection (g). Product liability actions are treated differently: subsection (e) leaves them uncapped, but 75 percent of any such award is payable to the state treasury. Do not read that as a promise. Punitive damages require clear and convincing evidence of willful misconduct, wantonness, or conscious indifference to consequences. A software failure alone does not clear that bar, and the impairment pathway that opens up uncapped punitives in drunk-driving cases is structurally unavailable against a driverless vehicle — nobody in it is impaired. Whether any punitive theory applies depends entirely on facts that have not been developed yet.
Apportionment and Georgia’s 50% bar
Under O.C.G.A. § 51-12-33, your damages are reduced by your own percentage of fault, and a plaintiff who is 50 percent or more responsible recovers nothing at all. Georgia also apportions damages among all responsible parties as several — not joint — liability. Expect the defense to argue another driver, a road condition, or you caused the collision. Blame-shifting in Georgia is not cosmetic; it is existential. [VERIFY: § 51-12-33 was amended in 2025; confirm the current text before publish.]
There is a newer wrinkle, and it cuts against you. Recent amendments to Georgia’s apportionment statute have expanded a defendant’s ability to shift fault onto people and companies who are not parties to the case — including where only one defendant has been sued. Sue one company alone and expect it to point at absent parties to shed its share. That is a concrete reason to identify every potentially responsible party before filing rather than after. [VERIFY: authority differs on whether the single-defendant non-party apportionment change originates in the 2022 or the 2025 amendments to O.C.G.A. § 51-12-33. Keep this at section level — do not print a subsection or a bill number until the attribution is confirmed.]
Seat belts are now admissible — this is new
Georgia’s 2025 tort reform repealed the long-standing rule barring seat-belt evidence. Whether an occupant was belted is now admissible, subject to ordinary balancing rules, and it can reduce a recovery. That matters specifically to robotaxi passengers, because Georgia’s autonomous-vehicle statute puts the seat-belt and child-restraint duty on the occupants — there is no driver up front to remind you. [VERIFY: confirm the amended § 40-8-76.1 text, the amending bill, and the effective date.]
The Evidence Lives on the Company’s Servers — Which Is Why Timing Matters
An autonomous vehicle records an extraordinarily detailed account of the seconds before a collision. Vehicles of this type typically generate camera and lidar records, radar returns, perception and planning logs showing what the system detected and decided, disengagement and remote-assistance records, event data recorder outputs, maintenance and calibration files, and software version history. None of it is in your hands. It sits on the operator’s servers, on the operator’s retention schedule — and the vehicle is usually repaired or back in service quickly.
Georgia’s controlling case on the duty to preserve is Phillips v. Harmon, 297 Ga. 386 (2015), in which the Supreme Court of Georgia held that the duty to preserve relevant evidence is viewed from the perspective of the party controlling it and arises not only when litigation is pending but when litigation is reasonably foreseeable to that party — for a potential defendant, when it knows or reasonably should know that the injured person is contemplating litigation. [VERIFY: confirm pinpoint page and exact quotation against the official reporter before any block quote is used.]
That is the concrete reason to call a lawyer quickly. A written preservation letter, sent early, puts the company on notice and starts that duty running for the sensor logs, video, decision data, and maintenance records. None of that data is automatically preserved for your benefit.
What To Do After a Crash With a Self-Driving Car in Atlanta
Georgia’s autonomous-vehicle statute (O.C.G.A. § 40-6-279) treats the usual duties to stop, render aid, and exchange information as satisfied when the vehicle stays on scene and it or its operator promptly contacts local law enforcement. Translation: there may be no human there to hand you a name, an insurer, or a statement. Build your own record.
- Call 911 yourself, and get emergency medical care if anyone is hurt.
- Ask for the police report number before you leave the scene.
- Photograph everything — the vehicle’s markings, plate, sensor housings, damage, roadway, signals, skid marks.
- Get independent witness names and numbers. Otherwise the record may rest on what the company transmitted.
- Get medically evaluated the same day. Delayed treatment is the first thing an adjuster attacks.
- Do not give a recorded statement before you speak with a lawyer.
- If you were a passenger, save your ride receipt, trip ID, and app screenshots. They document which company dispatched the vehicle and when.
- Call a lawyer promptly so a preservation letter goes out while the data still exists.
Local reporting in late July 2026 described a collision involving a driverless vehicle in northeast Atlanta that resulted in a fire. No charges have been reported and the circumstances have not been officially resolved — which is the point: early accounts are incomplete, and the record that settles what happened is usually digital.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is liable if a Waymo or other self-driving car hits me in Atlanta?
It depends on what failed. Georgia law looks for a person who caused the vehicle to move with the automated driving system engaged, which keeps a responsible party in the frame even with no one behind the wheel. Depending on the facts, that may point toward the company operating the driving system, the company handling fleet maintenance, a manufacturer on a product-defect theory, or another human driver. Identifying the right party takes the vehicle’s own data.
Does Georgia have PIP or no-fault insurance?
No. Georgia is an at-fault state with no personal injury protection coverage and no no-fault system, so nothing automatically begins paying your medical bills. In practice you rely on health insurance, MedPay if you bought it, or a letter of protection, and recover those expenses later from the at-fault party. Georgia also has no 14-day treatment rule and no serious-injury threshold.
How much insurance does a self-driving car have to carry in Georgia?
At least the limits in O.C.G.A. § 40-1-166 — $100,000 per person, $300,000 per occurrence, $50,000 property damage. A provision that once required 250 percent of those limits expired December 31, 2019. That floor is four times what an ordinary Georgia driver must carry, but it is not the $1 million Florida requires of robotaxis. It is only a minimum; actual available coverage has to be verified in your case.
I hailed the ride on Uber. Does Uber’s $1 million rideshare policy cover it?
That is an open question in Georgia — be skeptical of anyone who answers it confidently. The $1 million rideshare tier under O.C.G.A. § 33-1-24 is written around a “transportation network company driver,” an individual using a personal vehicle, and a driverless fleet vehicle is neither. No Georgia court appears to have addressed whether it reaches an autonomous vehicle. A company’s own fleet or contractual coverage may respond regardless, but that must be established with the policies.
How long do I have to file after a self-driving car accident in Georgia?
Generally two years from the date of injury under O.C.G.A. § 9-3-33 — long-standing Georgia law, not a recent change — and four years for property damage under § 9-3-31. A loss-of-consortium claim gets four years. A wrongful death claim under § 51-4-2 has its own rules, and a product-liability claim also faces a separate ten-year statute of repose from first sale. Deadlines shift with the claim and the defendant. Have yours calculated.
Can I sue the company that built the vehicle?
Potentially, on a product-liability theory. O.C.G.A. § 51-1-11(b) makes a manufacturer strictly liable, without privity, when a product sold as new is not merchantable and reasonably suited to its intended use and causes injury. That is a different case — different defendant, different proof, and a different clock, because § 51-1-11(b)(2) imposes a ten-year statute of repose from first sale. Georgia generally exempts mere product sellers from strict liability, so a claim against a servicer usually proceeds as ordinary negligence.
For more general answers about Georgia and Florida injury claims, see our personal injury FAQ.
Hurt by a Driverless Car? Talk to an Atlanta Waymo Accident Lawyer Before the Data Is Gone.
You are up against companies with in-house counsel, technical experts, and exclusive control of the record that proves what happened — and you should not be arguing with an adjuster about which policy applies while you are still trying to get treatment. The Perazzo Law Firm will move to preserve the vehicle’s data, work to identify every party that may be responsible, and pursue the compensation available under Georgia law.
- Free, confidential case evaluation — no obligation.
- Attorney Jonathan Perazzo — licensed in Georgia, Florida, and Texas.
- Bilingual staff — English / Español.
- Contingency fee: you are not billed an attorney’s fee unless there is a recovery. Attorney’s fees and case expenses are separate — ask us to explain in writing how case costs are handled before you sign anything. [VERIFY: contingency-fee and case-cost disclosure wording pending Paul’s approval under Georgia Bar advertising rules.]
Call (404) 669-6997 or request your free case evaluation through our contact page. The Perazzo Law Firm, 1372 Peachtree Street NE, Atlanta, GA 30309.
Results vary; past outcomes do not guarantee future results. This page describes Georgia law in general terms and is not a prediction or guarantee of any outcome in your case. Autonomous-vehicle liability is an emerging area of law with limited Georgia authority. The Perazzo Law Firm, 1372 Peachtree Street NE, Atlanta, GA 30309 — (404) 669-6997.