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.
Because Waymo uses more humans?
Because Waymo doesn’t try and do FSD with only cameras.
Are they doing FSD if there are human overseas? Surely that is not “fully”.
So human overseas and not only cameras.
All these services have the ability for a human to solve issues if the FSD disengages. Doesn’t mean they’re not driving on their own most of the time including full journeys. The remote assistant team is just ready to jump in if there’s something unusual that causes the Waymo driver to disengage and even then they don’t usually directly control the car, they just give the driver instructions on how to resolve the situation.
I think Waymo are right to do what they do. I just wouldn’t call it “fully”. If Telsa are doing the same and still doing badly, or should be doing the same and aren’t, it still makes them worse than Waymo either way.
No, they don’t.
Searching for “Waymo human overseas” brings up results about it. Doing similar for Telsa isn’t finding anything. Also I’ve not heard about like I have with Waymo. I don’t think Waymo are wrong to do this at all. It not making a decision when unsure is safer.
Waymo has a capability for remote control of their cars in niche situations. They don’t do it all the time like Tesla has been doing. It is for when they get boxed in to a street by moving trucks and the only way to move past is to break a driving rule like passing in a no passing zone. They have one remote driver for every 40 cars. Tesla has one remote driver for every one car.
You got a link for those numbers? Very damning if true. 40x the humans and still worse stats?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2026/02/17/waymo-overseas-human-assist-wasnt-secret-but-is-it-secure/
“It turns out Waymo has about one remote assistance operator for every 40 vehicles.”
https://www.t3.com/auto/teslas-first-robotaxis-are-actually-manned-by-humans
https://www.motorbiscuit.com/tesla-robotaxis-crash-higher-humans/
“Making the numbers look even worse for Tesla, “virtually every single one of these miles was driven with a trained safety monitor in the vehicle who could intervene at any moment, which means they likely prevented more crashes that Tesla’s system wouldn’t have avoided.””
Fair enough. Doesn’t surprise me Telsa are more hot air and bluster then Waymo.