Say what you want about Tesla, but it’s good at a lot of things. Take, for example, the robotaxi fleet in Austin, Texas. He’s apparently very good at crashing into things, despite having an actual human supervisor in the car making sure everything is in order.
The automaker reported three more accidents involving its fleet of self-driving Model Ys in September, bringing the total to seven incidents in just a few months, even though these cars make short trips and have relatively low mileage, the manufacturer said. Electrek. Tesla even moved the aforementioned human supervisor from the passenger seat to the driver’s seat to prevent things like this, but that apparently didn’t work.
Tesla reported the three robotaxi accidents to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The first occurred on September 4, when a robotaxi reversed into another vehicle, but no one was injured. The following happened in the early morning hours of September 6, when a Model Y struck a cyclist. Fortunately, no one was injured, but the bicycle was damaged. The latest incident occurred on September 7, when a Model Y struck an animal. No people were injured, but nothing is known about the animal.
Tesla’s secrecy
Unfortunately, not much else can be gleaned from these accident reports. As Electrek notes, Tesla likes to abuse its right to redact as much data as possible in these documents. It mainly redacts the entire “story” portion for each report, so we never really know what happened or who is responsible. Instead, they all read “[REDACTED, MAY CONTAIN CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS INFORMATION]”
Who knows how many accidents were prevented by the car supervisors who made sure the cars didn’t do anything crazy? But in any case, Tesla’s current robotaxi accident rate is about twice as high as Waymo’s, according to Electrek. However, you will notice that all of these accidents occurred after the supervisors in the car were moved to the driver’s seat.
I don’t really know where CEO Elon Musk or his robotaxis go from here. They’re clearly not ready for primetime in any meaningful way. Most cities besides Austin won’t even let Tesla sniff its deployment because of the whole, you know, safety thing. Of course, Elon always seems to get his way, so I’m sure someone will bend to his will or his fans will convince themselves that a robotaxi with a man behind the wheel is just as good as Waymo’s setup.
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