Tesla Robotaxis are crashing more than Waymo, even with human safety monitors

Tesla's Robotaxi service officially went live in late June of this year in Austin, Texas. Since then, Elon Musk's much-touted autonomous driving taxi system has already seen quite a few crashes — and that's with a human safety monitor onboard.

According to a new report from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Tesla Robotaxis have crashed four times since September. The most recent incident involved a robotaxi crashing into a "fixed object" while inside a parking lot, according to the EV news site Electrek, which noticed the updated crash information.

Recent Texas state law requires companies like Tesla to have a human safety monitor inside its Robotaxis due to its specific level of autonomous driving. These safety monitors are provided a killswitch to take over the vehicle in case something goes wrong with Tesla's self-driving system.

The NHTSA is a U.S. government agency responsible for enforcing motor vehicle regulations. Autonomous vehicle companies are required to report crashes to the agency within five days of being informed of these accidents. 

The NHTSA requires automakers to share information regarding incidents with autonomous driving (ADS) vehicles and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). The latter is what's typically found in regular Tesla vehicles with its Full Self-Driving system. However, robotaxis like Waymo's autonomous vehicles or Tesla's recently launched Robotaxis fall under the ADS category, marking this the first time Tesla has filed such reports under that designation.

With the two companies now operating ADS vehicles, Electrek compared the NHTSA incident reports between Tesla and Waymo. The outlet found that Tesla Robotaxis were involved in significantly more crashes per miles driven, despite Waymo vehicles not requiring a human safety monitor like Tesla Robotaxis. 

According to Tesla, Robotaxis have traveled 250,000 miles since the service launched in Austin in late June. Waymo's vehicles have traveled 125 million miles since the company launched its autonomous vehicles.

Breaking down the data, the report finds that Tesla Robotaxis crash approximately once every 62,500 miles. Waymo vehicles, which have been involved in 1,267 crashes since the service went live, crash approximately every 98,600 miles. And, again, Waymo does not have human safety monitors inside its vehicles, unlike Tesla's Robotaxis.

As Electrek points out, Tesla redacts a lot of information from its NHTSA reports, whereas Waymo provides more details about the crashes its cars are involved in. So, what exactly happened is unclear in many cases involving Tesla Robotaxis.

But, with the data we do have, it seems like Waymo has thus far bested Musk's Tesla when it comes to the more accurate autonomous vehicle system.