Say what you will about Tesla, but it’s good at a lot of things. Take its robotaxi fleet in Austin, Texas, for example. It’s apparently very good at crashing into things, despite the there’s a real ass human supervisor inside the car making sure everything is copasetic.
The automaker reported three more crashes involving its fleet of self-driving Model Ys in September, bringing the total to seven incidents in just a few short months, even though these cars are completing short trips and have done relatively low mileage, according to Electrek. Tesla has even moved the aforementioned human supervisor from the passenger’s seat to the driver’s seat to keep these sorts of things from happening, but it apparently hasn’t worked.
Tesla reported the three robotaxi crashes to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The first occurred on September 4 when a robotaxi backed into another vehicle, but no one was injured. The next happened in the early morning hours of September 6, when a Model Y hit a cyclist. Luckily, no one was hurt, but the bike was damaged. The final incident took place on September 7, when a Model Y struck some sort of animal. No humans were injured, but there’s no word on the animal.
Tesla’s secrecy
Unfortunately, there’s not too much else that can be gleaned from these accident reports. As Electrek points out, Tesla likes to abuse its right to redact as much data as possible in these filings. Mainly, it redacts the entire “narrative” section 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 crashes were prevented by the in-car supervisors making sure the cars didn’t do anything too screwy? But, in any case, Tesla’s current robotaxi crash rate is about two times as high as Waymo’s, according to Electrek. You will note, though, that all of these crashes took place after the in-car supervisors were moved to the driver’s seat.
I don’t really know where CEO Elon Musk or his robotaxis go from here. They’re very clearly not ready for primetime in any meaningful way. Hell, most cities other than Austin aren’t even letting Tesla sniff 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 guy behind the wheel is just as good as Waymo’s setup.
