In one incident, one of Tesla’s Robotaxi vehicles struck a cyclist, even though a safety driver was seated in the front passenger seat.
As many observers anticipated, Tesla’s Robotaxi program has not expanded at the pace Elon Musk once predicted, nor has it been operating as smoothly as the company suggested it would. Newly available data indicates that the autonomous vehicles Tesla is running in Austin, Texas, are being involved in crashes at a much higher rate than cars driven by humans.
According to information submitted to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Tesla’s Robotaxi fleet was involved in nine crashes between July and November of last year. Over that same period, the vehicles collectively accumulated roughly 500,000 miles, translating to about one crash for every 55,000 miles driven.
At first glance, that frequency may not sound catastrophic. However, NHTSA data shows that human drivers are involved in roughly one police-reported crash every 500,000 miles. When unreported incidents are taken into account, more realistic estimates place the figure closer to one crash every 200,000 miles.
Even using that more generous benchmark, human drivers still significantly outperform Tesla’s current autonomous system. Electrek highlighted this gap, drawing attention to how far Tesla’s safety performance currently lags behind conventional driving.
What adds to the concern is that Tesla’s Robotaxis operate with a safety monitor seated in the front passenger seat. Despite having a human present who can intervene if necessary, these vehicles are still crashing more frequently per mile than human drivers typically do on their own.
Tesla also appears to be less than fully transparent about the nature of these incidents. The crash reports submitted to the NHTSA are heavily redacted, leaving only sparse details about what actually occurred.
One report from September 2025 notes that a robotaxi “hit an animal at 27 mph,” but offers no explanation of the circumstances leading up to the collision. That same month, another Robotaxi was involved in a crash with a cyclist, again without meaningful detail on how or why it happened.
Based on incident data uncovered by Electrek in the NHTSA’s Standing General Order crash reports, Tesla disclosed the following nine Robotaxi-related crashes in Austin between July and November 2025:
- November 2025: Right turn collision
- October 2025: Incident at 18 mph
- September 2025: Hit an animal at 27 mph
- September 2025: Collision with cyclist
- September 2025: Rear collision while backing (6 mph)
- September 2025: Hit a fixed object in parking lot
- July 2025: Collision with SUV in construction zone
- July 2025: Hit fixed object, causing minor injury (8 mph)
- July 2025: Right turn collision with SUV
Robotaxi’s Slow Expansion
Back in July of last year, Musk made the bold claim that Tesla’s Robotaxi service would reach “half of the population of the US” by the end of 2025. Now that it’s 2026, the service remains confined to a single city: Austin, Texas.
Tesla has also rolled out a version of the service in the San Francisco Bay Area, but because the company lacks approval to operate fully autonomous vehicles in California, each Model Y still carries a human driver. That setup makes it far closer to a traditional ride-hailing service than a true Robotaxi operation.
Even so, Tesla appears intent on pressing forward. During its fourth-quarter earnings call this week, the company said it plans to expand Robotaxi operations into seven additional cities, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Miami, Orlando, Tampa, and Las Vegas, sometime during the first half of the year.
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