New Data Suggest Tesla’s ‘Robotaxi’ Fleet Crashing Four Times More Often Than Human Drivers

Tesla has reported five new crashes involving its “Robotaxi” fleet in Austin, Texas, bringing the total number of incidents to 14 since the service launched in June 2025. According to a new analysis of National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data, the fleet is now crashing nearly four times more often than what the company says is normal for a regular human driver in a minor collision, Elektrek reports.“The 14 crashes over roughly 800,000 miles yield a crash rate of one crash every 57,000 miles. Tesla’s own safety data indicate that a typical human driver has a minor collision every 229,000 miles, whether or not they are at fault,” Electrek reported. Furthermore, virtually every single mile driven by the Robotaxi fleet included a trained safety monitor ready to intervene, suggesting that human oversight likely prevented even more accidents that the system would not have avoided on its own. “By the company’s own numbers, its ‘Robotaxi’ fleet crashes nearly 4 times more often than a normal driver, and every single one of those miles had a safety monitor who could hit the kill switch. That is not a rounding error or an early-program hiccup. It is a fundamental performance gap,” the automotive website writes.The new data, which comes from the latest update to the NHTSA’s Standing General Order incident report database, covers incidents from December 2025 and January 2026. All five new crashes involved Model Y vehicles operating with the autonomous driving system “verified engaged.”The reported incidents include a collision with a fixed object at 17 mph, a crash with a bus while the Tesla was stationary, a collision with a heavy truck at 4 mph, and two separate instances where the vehicle backed into objects — one into a pole or tree and another into a fixed object.In addition to the fresh accidents, the updated filings reveal that Tesla quietly upgraded an earlier crash report to include a hospitalization. Originally filed as “property damage only,” the July 2025 crash — involving a right-turn collision with an SUV — was revised in December to “Minor W/ Hospitalization.”The delayed admission raises further questions regarding Tesla’s transparency. As with every previous crash in the database, Tesla fully redacted the new incident narratives as “confidential business information.” Tesla remains the only automated driving system operator to systematically hide crash details through these provisions; competitors like Waymo and Zoox provide full narrative descriptions of their incidents.While Tesla struggles with crash rates, competitors are reporting significantly safer metrics. Waymo, which has logged more than 127 million fully driverless miles without safety monitors, recently released new safety statistics.According to their data, Waymo vehicles are involved in far fewer crashes than human drivers in similar conditions. Waymo estimates that its vehicles get into injury-causing crashes “80 percent less often than human drivers,” and airbag-triggering crashes are reduced by 79 percent.However, the industry as a whole remains under a microscope. The NHTSA recently opened a probe into a separate incident involving a Waymo robotaxi that struck a child near a Santa Monica elementary school, as regulators continue to assess whether automated systems “exercised appropriate caution.”

New Data Suggest Tesla’s ‘Robotaxi’ Fleet Crashing Four Times More Often Than Human Drivers

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