Tesla’s Texas Robotaxis crashes four times more often than a human driver – Jalopnik

To make self-driving cars worthwhile, they have to be better than human drivers, otherwise what’s the point? Tesla’s own data suggests that its robotaxis, which should have grown to hundreds by now, are actually far worse than a human driver in the state of Texas.

The company’s own research shows that the average driver has a minor incident every 140,000 miles, regardless of whether he or she is at fault or not, and a major collision every 699,000 miles. According to NHTSA data, the average driver has an incident on the road that requires the police to be called about every 500,000 miles. In the meantime, reports ElectrekTesla’s 43-car ‘autonomous’ fleet in Austin, Texas has traveled approximately 800,000 miles since its launch eight months ago, and has reported fourteen separate crash incidents in that time. That amounts to a collision every 57,000 miles, or exactly 4,018 times as often as human-driven cars.

Through Tesla’s own shady reporting to the NHTSA database, the robotaxi fleet has come into contact with five other vehicles, five solid objects, one cyclist, one animal and two “others.” One of these collisions, reportedly a two-mile-per-hour collision with an SUV, required hospitalization. It’s worth remembering that Tesla covered most of its miles in Austin with onboard safety monitors that could (and did) hit an emergency stop button to prevent incidents altogether, and it’s impossible to know how many crashes were avoided this way.

I’ve driven over 60,000 miles in my life, and although I’m quickly approaching forty, I haven’t been in a car accident in twenty years. I certainly have never hit an SUV at walking speed in a way that resulted in a hospital stay. I already knew I was a safer driver than any version of Grok xAI could build, but now the data pretty much proves it.

Moreover, that crash with hospitalization already took place in July 2025. It wasn’t until July that it was reported as a property damage only incident, and later updated to the “minor requiring hospitalization” category in December. If from Electrek The report states: “Tesla’s delayed admission to hospital five months after the incident raises further questions about the crash report, which has already been heavily redacted.” I definitely ask questions. One of them is: why do people in Austin still drive Tesla Robotaxis?

Considering that the company’s CEO claimed that Tesla’s vision-only self-driving system was significantly safer than human drivers, and that he also said that Austin’s fleet at this point would be more than ten times larger than it is today and would operate in half the country (rather small parts of two cities), it’s impossible to believe everything the company’s figurehead says. With 42 vehicles available and an alleged availability of less than 20% of fleet operating hours, it appears this program is not going well at all.