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.
We are talking about Tesla robotaxis. They certainly do drive in very limited geofenced areas also. While Waymo now goes on freeways only in the Bay Area with the option being offered to only some passengers Tesla Robotaxis do not go on any freeways ever currently. In fact they only have a handful of cars doing any unsupervised driving at all and those are geofenced in Austin to a small area around a single stretch of road.
Tesla Robotaxis currently also cease operations in Austin when it rains so Waymo definitely is the more flexible one when it comes to less than perfect conditions.