An Arizona State University employee was knocked down and injured by a Starship delivery robot in September 2023, according to a police-report-based account published by 404 Media. The account says the robot changed direction, struck her, and then reversed toward her again after she fell. Starship later said the robot had encountered an oncoming vehicle and that the incident had been investigated, but the available reporting does not establish why it reversed.
What the police-report-based account says happened
404 Media reported the incident on September 19, 2024, after obtaining a police report through a public-records request. The collision occurred the previous September at Arizona State University. The employee was crossing near a parking garage and had waited for the Starship robot to pass.
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According to the quoted account in the report, the robot abruptly changed direction and hit her. After she was on the ground, it reversed toward her again. Futurism reported that video obtained by police corroborated the employee’s account. The responding officer reportedly saw no vehicle or other apparent object in front of the robot when it changed direction the second time.
Reported injuries
The accessible 404 Media account confirms that the employee was injured but does not list specific injuries. Futurism’s account of the police report says she complained of lower-back pain, had a four-inch gash on her left arm, and had difficulty walking away. Those details are attributed to Futurism’s reporting on the police record rather than independently verified in the available material.
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What Starship said
Futurism quoted a Starship spokesperson as telling 404 Media:
“We are aware of a situation over a year ago where a robot came into contact with a pedestrian at extremely low speed after detecting an oncoming vehicle. Safety is our number one priority, we take every incident seriously, the case was thoroughly investigated at the time.”
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The company’s statement characterizes the contact as occurring at “extremely low speed” and says the robot detected an oncoming vehicle. It does not explain the reported reversal toward the employee after she fell, identify the vehicle, or describe the investigation’s findings.
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How the accounts differ
| Account | What it establishes | What remains unanswered |
|---|---|---|
| Police-report-based coverage from 404 Media and Futurism | The employee waited for the robot, was struck after it changed direction, and was approached again as it reversed. Futurism says police video corroborated her account and describes the reported injuries. | The complete police record, the robot’s technical logs, and the precise trigger for each change in direction are not available in the reviewed reporting. |
| Starship statement | The company says the robot detected an oncoming vehicle, made contact at extremely low speed, and that the case was investigated. | The statement does not say why the robot reversed, what the investigation concluded, or what happened with insurance or any later legal process. |
These are not two equivalent technical investigations. The first is a report based on a police record and described video observations; the second is the company’s brief characterization of the event.
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What happened after the collision
404 Media reported that a Starship employee asked police for the victim’s information so the company could provide insurance information and “promo codes” for its delivery service. The available accounts do not establish whether a claim was filed, whether medical costs were paid, or whether any legal action followed.
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404 Media said Starship operated at 30 universities in the United States when it published its report in 2024. That is a contemporaneous statement about company presence, not a count of robots, deliveries, collisions, or injuries. The reviewed reports provide no published collision-rate or injury-rate statistic with which to measure this incident.
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What the reporting does—and does not—show
- The reported collision involved a Starship delivery robot and an Arizona State University employee.
- The police-report-based account says the robot moved toward the employee again after she had fallen.
- Specific injuries reported by Futurism are attributed to its account of the police report; 404 Media’s accessible summary only confirms injury generally.
- Starship said it had investigated the incident, but the available material does not establish the cause of the robot’s reversal.
- No complete police record or later official, insurance, or legal outcome is available in the reviewed accounts.
Why the cause remains unresolved
Starship’s reference to an oncoming vehicle supplies one part of its explanation, while the police-report-based account describes a second direction change for which the available coverage reports no vehicle or other apparent object ahead of the robot. Neither account provides the robot’s sensor data, software state, remote-operator record, or a full investigation report. It is therefore not possible to say from the published material whether the reversal resulted from vehicle detection, another sensor input, remote control, a software decision, or a malfunction.
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