3 ms·

Tesla's 45 Austin Robotaxis now have 14 crashes on the books since June 2025

54 points by speckx 9mo ago

ChrisArchitect 9mo ago
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47051546 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47051546
tim-tday 9mo ago
That seems low. I would like to see the quantity of human interventions too.
- aerhardt 9mo ago
  Low? Put it this way. You work in a company or go to class with 45 people. Do you really think that 14 crashes in the last ~9 months is low? In terms of miles driven, which is the fair comparison, from the article: > Electrek analysis found that the vehicles have traveled roughly 800,000 paid miles in that time period, amounting to a crash every 57,000 miles. According to the NHTSA, US drivers crash once every 500,000 miles on average.
  - bdcravens 9mo ago
    Well, if it was 45 fifteen year old kids taking a short book class in drivers ed, and then turned loose on the streets of Austin, then yes.
    - bdangubic 9mo ago
      perfect! this is exactly what the Tesla “robotaxi” slogan should be - *Ride with us to experience what being driven by 15-year old kids is like”
  - cucumber3732842 9mo ago
    Maybe, I really can't say. My coworkers aren't telling me every time they back into a light post nor are they narcing on themselves to their insurer (who tells the NHTSA) that they wound up in a ditch and the tow truck driver had to pop their bumper cover back on. We have no good data for how often humans make "not work reporting to anybody" crashes because the system is set up to be adversarial and therefore those do't get reported and there are a lot of those in this data.
mrguyorama 9mo ago
>“The new crashes include a collision with a fixed object at 17 mph while the vehicle was driving straight, a crash with a bus while the Tesla was stationary, a collision with a heavy truck at 4 mph, and two separate incidents where the Tesla backed into objects, one into a pole or tree at 1 mph and another into a fixed object at 2 mph.” >Electrek analysis found that the vehicles have traveled roughly 800,000 paid miles in that time period, amounting to a crash every 57,000 miles. According to the NHTSA, US drivers crash once every 500,000 miles on average. Jesus, 10x worse than the average US driver is crazy. There's serious variability in human driving demographics, with some subsets already being that much worse than other subsets, things like "What city do you live in" can bring that stat down significantly. So, to all the people who insist that autopilot is "better than human", do you still believe it? Assume it drives as many unpaid miles, that's still 5x worse than average drivers, which includes things like alcoholics, people who consistently drive high, people who don't really know how to drive, and that person you see on the road eating a fucking meal and doing their makeup and reading a book, and drivers who are currently asleep. I uh did not actually expect the data to be this bad. Statistically, we need more data, but this is concerning. Not slowly tapping into objects that cannot move is probably a good way to improve those stats. Did Tesla abandon the industry standard ultrasonic sensors everyone else studs their bumpers with? Many other cars in the industry can parallel park themselves through these sensors, and reliably do not hit parked objects.
- heathrow83829 9mo ago
  this is misleading because they're not comparing apples to apples. the insurance companies are looking into all the details I'm sure to be able price the risk accordingly. Lemonade is putting their money where their mouth is and it's pricing FSD miles at 1/2 the rate of manned driving. that's because FSD gets 1/2 the number accidents per mile.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 9mo ago
    > insurance companies If it's so good then why doesnt Tesla eat the liability?
  - Rebelgecko 9mo ago
resters 9mo ago
I used to root for Elon/Tesla to succeed until I realized that Elon has zero respect for democracy and zero respect for accountability. This is a rich guy on a power trip gone way out of control, and we can see in the nearly weekly outbursts and emotional escapades that any success his companies have had has been in spite of Elon rather than because of him. There is also something that strikes me as off about the "richest guy in the world" (and former? illegal immigrant) attacking immigrants, refugees, and the most helpless people in the world. His is not an engineer's mind at work. It's a rich kid who knows he's failed in meritocracy being protected by tariffs from competition having a slow internal and external meltdown.
fuzzfactor 9mo ago
All these seem like clones of the same vehicle's "driver". How many traffic tickets can one driver get before their license is suspended? Aren't actual collisions worse violations too? People can lose their license, sometimes forever. This really amounts to one single driver's lack of ability proving more dangerous than the worst humans allowed on the road.

54 points by speckx 9mo ago

ChrisArchitect 9mo ago

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47051546 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47051546

tim-tday 9mo ago

That seems low. I would like to see the quantity of human interventions too.

aerhardt 9mo ago
Low? Put it this way. You work in a company or go to class with 45 people. Do you really think that 14 crashes in the last ~9 months is low? In terms of miles driven, which is the fair comparison, from the article: > Electrek analysis found that the vehicles have traveled roughly 800,000 paid miles in that time period, amounting to a crash every 57,000 miles. According to the NHTSA, US drivers crash once every 500,000 miles on average.
- bdcravens 9mo ago
  Well, if it was 45 fifteen year old kids taking a short book class in drivers ed, and then turned loose on the streets of Austin, then yes.
  - bdangubic 9mo ago
    perfect! this is exactly what the Tesla “robotaxi” slogan should be - *Ride with us to experience what being driven by 15-year old kids is like”
- cucumber3732842 9mo ago
  Maybe, I really can't say. My coworkers aren't telling me every time they back into a light post nor are they narcing on themselves to their insurer (who tells the NHTSA) that they wound up in a ditch and the tow truck driver had to pop their bumper cover back on. We have no good data for how often humans make "not work reporting to anybody" crashes because the system is set up to be adversarial and therefore those do't get reported and there are a lot of those in this data.

mrguyorama 9mo ago

>“The new crashes include a collision with a fixed object at 17 mph while the vehicle was driving straight, a crash with a bus while the Tesla was stationary, a collision with a heavy truck at 4 mph, and two separate incidents where the Tesla backed into objects, one into a pole or tree at 1 mph and another into a fixed object at 2 mph.” >Electrek analysis found that the vehicles have traveled roughly 800,000 paid miles in that time period, amounting to a crash every 57,000 miles. According to the NHTSA, US drivers crash once every 500,000 miles on average. Jesus, 10x worse than the average US driver is crazy. There's serious variability in human driving demographics, with some subsets already being that much worse than other subsets, things like "What city do you live in" can bring that stat down significantly. So, to all the people who insist that autopilot is "better than human", do you still believe it? Assume it drives as many unpaid miles, that's still 5x worse than average drivers, which includes things like alcoholics, people who consistently drive high, people who don't really know how to drive, and that person you see on the road eating a fucking meal and doing their makeup and reading a book, and drivers who are currently asleep. I uh did not actually expect the data to be this bad. Statistically, we need more data, but this is concerning. Not slowly tapping into objects that cannot move is probably a good way to improve those stats. Did Tesla abandon the industry standard ultrasonic sensors everyone else studs their bumpers with? Many other cars in the industry can parallel park themselves through these sensors, and reliably do not hit parked objects.

heathrow83829 9mo ago
this is misleading because they're not comparing apples to apples. the insurance companies are looking into all the details I'm sure to be able price the risk accordingly. Lemonade is putting their money where their mouth is and it's pricing FSD miles at 1/2 the rate of manned driving. that's because FSD gets 1/2 the number accidents per mile.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 9mo ago
  > insurance companies If it's so good then why doesnt Tesla eat the liability?
- Rebelgecko 9mo ago

resters 9mo ago

I used to root for Elon/Tesla to succeed until I realized that Elon has zero respect for democracy and zero respect for accountability. This is a rich guy on a power trip gone way out of control, and we can see in the nearly weekly outbursts and emotional escapades that any success his companies have had has been in spite of Elon rather than because of him. There is also something that strikes me as off about the "richest guy in the world" (and former? illegal immigrant) attacking immigrants, refugees, and the most helpless people in the world. His is not an engineer's mind at work. It's a rich kid who knows he's failed in meritocracy being protected by tariffs from competition having a slow internal and external meltdown.

fuzzfactor 9mo ago

All these seem like clones of the same vehicle's "driver". How many traffic tickets can one driver get before their license is suspended? Aren't actual collisions worse violations too? People can lose their license, sometimes forever. This really amounts to one single driver's lack of ability proving more dangerous than the worst humans allowed on the road.