Tesla reports another Robotaxi crash, even with supervisor as it moves to remove them

Tesla has reported yet another crash involving its Robotaxi fleet in Austin to the NHTSA. The new data keeps the program’s accident rate alarmingly high compared to human drivers, even as the company prepares to remove human safety supervisors from the vehicles.

As we have been tracking in our previous coverage of the Robotaxi pilot in Austin, Tesla is required to report crashes involving its automated driving systems (ADS) to the NHTSA under a Standing General Order.

For months, we’ve seen these reports trickle in from Tesla’s small pilot fleet in Texas. In November, we reported that the fleet had reached 7 total crashes as of September.

Now, a new report filed by Tesla reveals an 8th crash occurred in October 2025.

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According to the filing, the incident took place on October [Day Redacted], 2025, in Austin. The valid report (Report ID: 13781-11986) lists the “Highest Injury Severity Alleged” as “No Injured Reported,” but details are scarce because, as is typical for Tesla, the narrative description of the crash has been redacted to hide proprietary information.

We have been highlighting how Tesla often abuses NHTSA’s capability to redact much of the information in the crash reports, especially the ‘Narrative’ section, which explains precisely what happened in the incident.

It’s possible that Tesla’s Robotaxis are not responsible for some of these crashes, but we wouldn’t know because Tesla redacts most information.

In this new filing for the accident that happened in October, Tesla went even further as it even refrains from answering some of the sections. Instead, it says “see the narrative,” which again is redacted.

Here’s the updated list of Tesla Robotaxi crashes:

We do know that the crash involved “Other” as the conflict partner, and the vehicle was “Proceeding Straight” at the time.

Tesla Robotaxi Crash Rate

While a few fender benders might not seem like headline news, it becomes significant when you look at the math.

Last month, Tesla confirmed the fleet had traveled roughly 250,000 miles. With 7 reported crashes at the time, Tesla’s Robotaxi was crashing roughly once every 40,000 miles (extrapolating from the previously disclosed Robotaxi mileage).

For comparison, the average human driver in the US crashes about once every 500,000 miles.

This means Tesla’s “autonomous” vehicle, which is supposed to be the future of safety, is crashing 10x more often than a human driver.

While Tesla’s Robotaxi fleet reportedly increased in November, with the number of cars spotted going up to 29, there’s no evidence that the Robotaxi mileage increased. In fact, the utilization rate indicates Tesla is running only a few vehicles at a time – meaning that mileage might have actually gone down.

And that is not even the scariest part.

The Supervisor Paradox

The most critical detail that gets lost in the noise is that these crashes are happening with a human safety supervisor in the driver’s seat (for highway trips) or passenger seat, with a finger on a kill switch.

These employees are trained to intervene and take control of the vehicle if the software makes a mistake.

If the car is crashing this frequently with a human babysitter trying to prevent accidents, imagine what the crash rate would be without them.

Yet, that is exactly what Tesla is doing.

Elon Musk recently claimed that Tesla would remove safety monitors from the Robotaxi fleet in Austin within “three weeks.”

Yesterday, we reported that a Tesla Robotaxi was spotted for the first time without anyone in the front seats, and Musk confirmed that Tesla started testing without a supervisor.

Electrek’s Take

This is becoming hard to watch.

We have Waymo operating fully driverless commercial services in multiple cities with over 100 million miles of data showing they are safer than humans. They are not without their issues, but they are at least sharing data that is encouraging, including not redacting the NTHSA crash reporting.

Meanwhile, Tesla is struggling to keep a small test fleet in Austin from hitting things, even with professional safety drivers on board.

Removing the safety supervisors when your crash rate is already orders of magnitude worse than the average human seems reckless. It feels like another case of prioritizing the “optics” of autonomy over the actual safety required to deploy it.

If Tesla pulls the supervisors while the data looks like this, it’s no longer a pilot program. It’s a gamble. And it’s not just gambling on its stock price, it’s gambling with everyone’s safety.