Just weeks after Waymo’s co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana urged companies at TechCrunch Disrupt to share more data, Tesla has released its most in-depth analysis to date regarding the performance and safety of its advanced driver-assistance system.
In a newly launched section on its website, Tesla asserts that in North America, users of its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software travel roughly 5 million miles between significant collisions and about 1.5 million miles between minor ones.
According to Tesla’s interpretation, this is a considerably lower rate than the national average based on figures from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). These figures suggest that people experience a major collision every 699,000 miles and a minor one every 229,000 miles.
Tesla has been publishing quarterly “vehicle safety reports” for some time. However, these reports have often been criticized as inadequate. Furthermore, Tesla has shared minimal details regarding the safety performance of its Robotaxi trial in Austin, Texas, which still involves employees in the driver’s seat for safety monitoring.
Waymo, currently the leading robotaxi firm in the U.S. based on vehicle deployment and customer numbers, has published comprehensive data indicating its vehicles are approximately 5x safer than human-operated vehicles, and 12x safer concerning pedestrians. At the Disrupt conference last month, Mawakana was asked to identify other companies she believed were enhancing road safety.
“I’m unsure who belongs on that list, given the lack of information about their fleet operations,” Mawakana stated, without mentioning Tesla.
“I believe that if you intend to deploy vehicles on public roads, remove the driver, and have someone oversee the fleet remotely, it is your responsibility to be transparent about your operations,” she added. “In my opinion, a lack of transparency indicates a failure to take the necessary steps to genuinely earn the right to improve road safety.”
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Waymo did not promptly respond to a request for comment on Friday regarding whether Mawakana considers Tesla’s new data to be satisfactory.
A recurring critique of Tesla’s quarterly safety reports is their focus on Autopilot, a less sophisticated driver-assistance system compared to the Full Self Driving (Supervised) software, or FSD, which, despite its name, does not render a vehicle fully autonomous. Autopilot is intended for highway use, where crash rates are typically lower (including minor collisions).
Tesla has now released this detailed data. According to the new section of Tesla’s website, drivers using FSD travel approximately 2.9 million miles between major collisions, whereas NHTSA data indicates that all drivers travel around 505,000 miles per major collision. Tesla claims that FSD users travel approximately 986,000 miles between minor collisions, while NHTSA data suggests all drivers travel about 178,000 miles per minor collision.
Tesla is also, for the first time, clarifying its definitions of these terms.
The automaker is referencing the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, specifically 49 C.F.R. § 563.5. Tesla defines “major collisions” as crashes with high-severity impacts that trigger the deployment of a vehicle’s airbags “or other non-reversible pyrotechnic restraints.” The company also states that if FSD was engaged “at any moment within five seconds preceding a collision event,” it includes the crash in this dataset.
“This calculation ensures that the reported collision rates for FSD (Supervised) include not only collisions occurring while the system is actively controlling the vehicle but also instances where a driver disengages the system or the system disengages independently shortly before impact,” Tesla explains.
In its FAQ section, Tesla mentions that it will update the data quarterly, “reflecting a rolling twelve-month aggregation of miles and collisions to remain relevant to recent trends and progress.” The company states it will not release other data, such as injury rates, as it collects this data automatically from vehicles.
“Instead, Tesla focuses on objective and programmatic metrics such as collision frequency and airbag deployment rates. Airbag deployments serve as a reliable proxy for collision severity,” the company writes.
