Funny That

Even using Tesla's own highly suspect numbers, their Robotaxi is three times more likely to crash than a human driver, and this applies even when there is a safety driver behind the wheel.

I would note that Tesla's so-called full self driving would not be any more capable for a passenger car, which makes it, "Unsafe at any speed." 

Tesla’s nascent robotaxi program is off to a rough start. New NHTSA crash data, combined with Tesla’s new disclosure of robotaxi mileage, reveals Tesla’s autonomous vehicles are crashing at a rate much higher tha human drivers, and that’s with a safety monitor in every car.

The data

According to NHTSA’s Standing General Order crash reports, Tesla has reported 9 crashes involving its robotaxi fleet in Austin, Texas between July and November 2025: November 2025: Right turn collision

• October 2025: Incident at 18 mph
• September 2025: Hit an animal at 27 mph
• September 2025: Collision with cyclist
• September 2025: Rear collision while backing (6 mph)
• September 2025: Hit a fixed object in parking lot
• July 2025: Collision with SUV in construction zone
• July 2025: Hit fixed object, causing minor injury (8 mph)
• July 2025: Right turn collision with SUV

According to a chart in Tesla’s Q4 2025 earnings report showing cumulative robotaxi miles, the fleet has traveled approximately 500,000 miles as of November 2025. That works out to roughly one crash every 55,000 miles.

For comparison, human drivers in the United States average approximately one police-reported crash every 500,000 miles, according to NHTSA data.

That means Tesla’s robotaxis are crashing at a rate 9 times higher than the average human driver.

However, that figure doesn’t include non-police-reported incidents. When adding those, or rather an estimate of those, humans are closer to 200,000 miles between crashes, which is still a lot better than Tesla’s robotaxi in Austin.

I am of the opinion that self-driving cars remain more humbug than anything else, but even by the standards of this reality challenged endeavor, Tesla appears to be particularly bad at its execution as a result of Elon Musk's insistence that it eschew technologies such as radar and lidar, and instead rely entirely on cameras..