Tesla's Robotaxi data confirms crash rate 3x worse than humans even with monitor

Summary

Tesla’s nascent robotaxi program is off to a rough start. New NHTSA crash data, combined with Tesla’s new disclosure of robotaxi mileage, reveals Tesla’s autonomous vehicles are crashing at a rate much higher tha human drivers, and that’s with a safety monitor in every car. The data According to NHTSA’s Standing General Order crash reports, Tesla has reported 9 crashes involving its robotaxi fleet in Austin, Texas between July and November 2025: November 2025: Right turn collision October 2025: Incident at 18 mph September 2025: Hit an animal at 27 mph September 2025: Collision with cyclist September 2025: Rear collision while backing (6 mph) September 2025: Hit a fixed object in parking lot July 2025: Collision with SUV in construction zone July 2025: Hit fixed object, causing minor injury (8 mph) July 2025: Right turn collision with SUV According to a chart in Tesla’s Q4 2025 earnings report showing cumulative robotaxi miles, the fleet has traveled approximately 500,000 miles as of November 2025. That works out to roughly one crash every 55,000 miles. For comparison, human drivers in the United States average approximately one police-reported crash every 500,000 miles, according to NHTSA data. Advertisement - scroll for more content That means Tesla’s robotaxis are crashing at a rate 9 times higher than the average human driver. However, that figure doesn’t include non-police-reported incidents. When adding those, or rather an estimate of those, humans are closer to 200,000 miles between crashes, which is still a lot better than Tesla’s robotaxi in Austin. The safety monitor problem Here’s what makes this data particularly damning: every Tesla robotaxi in the reported mileage had a safety monitor in the vehicle who can intervene at any moment. These aren’t fully autonomous vehicles operating without backup. There’s a human sitting in the car whose entire job is to prevent crashes. And yet Tesla’s crash rate is still nearly an order of magnitude worse than regular ...