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Tesla Robotaxis Reportedly Crashing at a Rate That's 4x Higher Than Humans (gizmodo.com)
submitted 6 months ago* by 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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[–] 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (4 children)

Regular FSD rate has the driver (you) monitoring the car so there will be less accidents IF you properly stay attentive as you're supposed to be.

The FSD rides with a saftey monitor (passenger seat) had a button to stop the ride.

The driverless and no monitor cars have nothing.

So you get more accidents as you remove that supervision.

Edit: this would be on the same software versions... it will obviously get better to some extent, so comparing old versions to new versions really only tells us its getting better or worse in relation to the past rates, but in all 3 scenarios there should still be different rates of accidents on the same software.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    The unsupervised cars are very unlikely to be involved in these crashes yet because according to Robotaxi tracker there was only a single one of those operational and only for the final week of January.

    As you suggest there's a difference in how much the monitor can really do about FSD misbehaving compared to a driver in the driver's seat though. On the other hand they're still forced to have the monitor behind the wheel in California so you wouldn't expect a difference in accident rate based on that there, would be interesting to compare.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

    There are multiple unsupervised cars around now, it was only the 1 before earnings call (that went away), then a few days after earnings they came back and weren't followed by chase cars. There's a handful of videos over many days out there now if you want to watch any. The latest gaffe video I've seen is from last week where it drove into (edit: road closed) construction zone that wasn't blocked off.

    I would still expect a difference between California and people like you and me using it.

    My understanding is that in California, they've been told not to intervene unless necessary, but when someone like us is behind the steering wheel what we consider necessary is going to be different than what they've been told to consider necessary.

    So we would likely intervene much sooner than the saftey driver in California, which would mean we were letting the car get into less situations we perceive to be dicey.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (1 child)

    Yeah I seen that video and another where they went back and forth for an hour in a single unsupervised Tesla. One thing to note is that they are all geofenced to a single extremely limited route that spans about a 20 minute drive along Riverside Dr and S Lamar Blvd with the ability to drive on short sections of some of the crossing streets there, that's it.

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