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submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works to c/technology@lemmy.world

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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[-] merc@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 day ago

Well, Waymo's really at 0 deaths per 127 million miles.

The 2 deaths are deaths that happened were near Waymo cars in a collision involving the Waymo car. Not only did the Waymo not cause the accidents, they weren't even involved in the fatal part of either event. In one case a motorcyclist was hit by another car, and in the other one a Tesla crashed into a second car after it had hit the Waymo (and a bunch of other cars).

The IIHS number takes the total number of deaths in a year, and divides it by the total distance driven in that year. It includes all vehicles, and all deaths. If you wanted the denominator to be "total distance driven by brand X in the year", you wouldn't keep the numerator as "all deaths" because that wouldn't make sense, and "all deaths that happened in a collision where brand X was involved as part of the collision" would be of limited usefulness. If you're after the safety of the passenger compartment you'd want "all deaths for occupants / drivers of a brand X vehicle" and if you were after the safety of the car to all road users you'd want something like "all deaths where the driver of a brand X vehicle was determined to be at fault".

The IIHS does have statistics for driver death rates by make and model, but they use "per million registered vehicle years", so you can't directly compare with Waymo:

https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-model

Also, in Waymo it would never be the driver who died, it would be other vehicle occupants, so I don't know if that data is tracked for other vehicle models.

[-] hector@lemmy.today 0 points 16 hours ago

I seem to recall a homeless woman that got killed like right away when they released these monstrosities on the road, because why pay people to do jobs when machines can do them for you? I'm sure that will work out for everyone, with investment income.

[-] JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 2 points 9 hours ago

That was Uber's attempt at self driving after they had to give up the stolen Waymo data. Waymo is probably the best at self driving, but even they spend too much time blocking traffic when they can't reach the Indian call center to fix the situation they've gotten themselves in.

[-] hector@lemmy.today 2 points 9 hours ago

Backed up by AI, Actually Indians.

[-] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 9 hours ago
[-] hector@lemmy.today 1 points 8 hours ago

Unless you found the video I will trust my memory.

[-] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 8 hours ago

The video of the thing that didn't happen?

this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2026
1038 points (99.4% liked)

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