Tesla’s Robotaxi Rollout Faces Early Safety Questions in Austin

The Tesla “Robotaxi” experiment in Austin is hitting some literal bumps in the road, with five new crashes reported just as the company tries to ditch human safety monitors.

Tesla’s small fleet of Model Y Robotaxis in Austin is having a hard time avoiding trouble. According to recent data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the fleet added five more crashes in December and January, bringing the total to 14 since the service went live in June 2025.

The crashes include a collision with a fixed object at 17 mph while the vehicle was driving straight, a crash with a bus while the Tesla was stationary, a collision with a heavy truck at 4 mph, and two incidents where the Tesla backed into objects: one into a pole or tree at 1 mph and another into a fixed object at 2 mph.

The secretive sidebar

While competitors like Waymo and Zoox provide detailed descriptions of their accidents, Tesla has chosen a different path. Every single one of Tesla’s incident narratives in the NHTSA database is redacted as “confidential business information.” Adding to the mystery, Tesla recently updated a report from a July 2025 crash. 

Originally listed as “property damage only,” the company quietly revised it five months later to include “Minor W/ Hospitalization.” This delay in disclosing a hospital-level injury has raised eyebrows regarding the fleet’s actual safety record.

While the redactions have drawn criticism, companies are permitted under federal rules to withhold certain proprietary technical details. It’s not uncommon for firms to protect aspects of automated driving systems they consider competitively sensitive, though transparency expectations in the autonomous vehicle sector continue to evolve.

Humans vs hardware

The numbers aren’t exactly doing Tesla any favors.

Based on Tesla’s data showing approximately 700,000 cumulative paid miles through November 2025, the Austin fleet likely reached around 800,000 miles by mid-January 2026. That puts the crash rate at approximately one incident every 57,000 miles, according to Electrek.

Tesla’s own Vehicle Safety Report states that the average American driver experiences a minor collision every 229,000 miles. By that benchmark, the robotaxi fleet is crashing nearly 4 times more often than human drivers, despite trained safety monitors in every vehicle.

Waymo, which operates fully driverless vehicles in Austin without safety monitors, has logged over 127 million miles nationwide. Research data shows Waymo reduces injury-causing crashes by 80 percent compared to human drivers. The company has reported 51 incidents in Austin to the same NHTSA database, but has driven significantly more miles in the city than Tesla.

However, it’s also worth noting that Tesla’s Austin program remains relatively small and is still early in its rollout, compared with competitors that have logged tens of millions more miles. Early autonomous deployments often see higher incident rates as systems encounter new edge cases in dense urban environments. As cumulative mileage increases, crash rates may shift in either direction.

Is vision enough?

The recent string of accidents has even some investors questioning the tech. 

Ross Gerber, co-founder of Gerber Kawasaki, suggested on X that Tesla’s vision-only approach might need a rethink. “Things don’t seem to be improving,” Gerber posted, adding, “It’s possible that tesla needs to make hardware adjustments.”

This criticism comes at a delicate time. In late January, Tesla began testing rides in Austin without any safety monitor in the car at all. While Elon Musk remains bullish on a future filled with “Cybercabs,” the current data suggests the road to full autonomy still has plenty of potholes.

Also read: Zoox recalled 332 robotaxis over an ADS software issue that could cause lane crossings near intersections.

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