this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2026
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Tesla Robotaxis Reportedly Crashing at a Rate That's 4x Higher Than Humans (gizmodo.com)
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Self-driving cars are often marketed as safer than human drivers, but new data suggests that may not always be the case.

Citing data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Electrek reports that Tesla disclosed five new crashes involving its robotaxi fleet in Austin. The new data raises concerns about how safe Tesla’s systems really are compared to the average driver.

The incidents included a collision with a fixed object at 17 miles per hour, a crash with a bus while the Tesla vehicle was stopped, a crash with a truck at four miles per hour, and two cases where Tesla vehicles backed into fixed objects at low speeds.

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[–] dogslayeggs@lemmy.world 21 points 1 month ago (37 children)

It's important to draw the line between what Tesla is trying to do and what Waymo is actually doing. Tesla has a 4x higher rate, but Waymo has a lower rate.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 14 points 1 month ago (22 children)

Not just lower, a tiny fraction of the human rate of accidents:

https://waymo.com/safety/impact/

Also, AFAIK this includes cases when the Waymo car isn't even slightly at fault. Like, there have been 2 deaths involving a Waymo car. In one case a motorcyclist hit the car from behind, flipped over it, then was hit by another car and killed. In the other case, ironically, the real car at fault was a Tesla being driven by a human who claims he experienced "sudden unintended acceleration". It was driving at 98 miles per hour in downtown SF and hit a bunch of stopped cars at a red light, then spun into oncoming traffic and killed a man and his dog who were in another car.

Whether or not self-driving cars are a good thing is up for debate. But, it must suck to work at Waymo and to be making safety a major focus, only to have Tesla ruin the market by making people associate self-driving cars with major safety issues.

[–] TooManyGames@sopuli.xyz 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I immediately formed a conspiracy theory that Teslas automatically accelerate when they see Waymo cars

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

And it's not out of aggression. It's just that their image recognition algorithms are so terrible that they match the Waymo car with all its sensors to a time-traveling DeLorean and try to hit 88 mph.... or something.

[–] TooManyGames@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 month ago

They crash for the memes. Sounds about right considering who's in charge.

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