TL;DR: Self-Driving Teslas Rear-End Motorcyclists, Killing at Least 5
Brevity is the spirit of wit, and I am just not that witty. This is a long article, here is the gist of it:
- The NHTSA’s self-driving crash data reveals that Tesla’s self-driving technology is, by far, the most dangerous for motorcyclists, with five fatal crashes that we know of.
- This issue is unique to Tesla. Other self-driving manufacturers have logged zero motorcycle fatalities with the NHTSA in the same time frame.
- The crashes are overwhelmingly Teslas rear-ending motorcyclists.
Read our full analysis as we go case-by-case and connect the heavily redacted government data to news reports and police documents.
Oh, and read our thoughts about what this means for the robotaxi launch that is slated for Austin in less than 60 days.
Unless it’s a higher rate than human drivers per mile or hours driven I do not care. Article doesn’t have those stats so it’s clickbait as far as I’m concerned
Thanks, 'Satan.
Do you know the number of miles driven by Tesla’s self-driving tech? Because I don’t, Tesla won’t say, they’re a remarkably non-transparent company where their tech is concerned. Near as I can tell, nobody does (other than folks locked up tight with NDAs). If the ratio of accidents-per-mile-driven looked good, you know as a flat fact that Elon would be Tweeting all about it.
Sorry you didn’t find the death of 5 Americans newsworthy. I’ll try harder for the next one.
You’re right, 5 deaths isn’t newsworthy in the context of tens of thousands killed by human drivers each year.
Is it worse than human drivers is the only relevant point of comparison, which the article doesn’t make.
The fact that the other self driving brands logged zero motorcyclist fatalities means the technology exists to prevent more deaths. Tesla has chosen to allow more people to die in order to reduce cost. The families of those five dead motorcyclists certainly care.
[Edit: oh, my bad, I replied to you very cattily when I meant to reply to Satan. Sorry! Friendly fire! XD ]
Cybertrucks have 17 times the mortality rate of the ford pinto.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/02/report-cybertruck-safety-ford-pinto/
I wrote the original analysis Mother Jones is citing there. Hah, how about that! Delights me to see it cited in the wild.
Completely irrelevant to whether or not FSD is safer than human drivers.
Same goes for the other vehicles. They didn’t even try to cover miles driven and it’s quite likely Tesla has far more miles of self-driving than anyone else.
I’d even go so far as to speculate the zero accidents of other self-driving vehicles could just be zero information because we don’t have enough information to call it zero
No, the zero accidents for other self-driving vehicles is actually zero :) You may have heard of this little boutique automotive manufacturer, Ford Motor Company. They’re one of the primary competitors, and they are far above the mileage where you would expect a fatal accident if they were as safe as a human.
Ford has reported self-driving crashes (many of them!). Just no fatal crashes involving motorcycles, because I guess they don’t fucking suck at making self-driving software.
I linked the data, it’s all public governmental data, and only the Tesla crashes are heavily redacted. You could… IDK… read it, and then share your opinion about it?
And how did it compare self-driving time or miles? Because on the surface if Tesla is responsible for 5 such accidents and Ford zero, but Tesla has significantly more than five times the self-driving time or miles, then we just don’t have data yet …… and I see an announcement that Ford expects full self driving in 2026, so it can’t have been used much yet