According to new unredacted information submitted to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the Tesla Robotaxis has crashed at least twice since July 2025 while the teleoperator was driving the cars remotely.
Both crashes occurred in Austin, Texas, and occurred at low speeds. In each case, there was a safety monitor behind the wheel and there were no passengers on board.
The new information comes after several months from Tesla told the deputies it allows remote operators to drive one of the company’s vehicles as long as they stay under 10 miles per hour. “This capability allows Tesla to immediately move a vehicle that may be compromised, thereby reducing the need to wait for a first responder or Tesla field representative to manually recover the vehicle,” the company said.
Tesla, like other companies working on autonomous vehicle technology, must provide NHTSA with detailed information about any accidents. Unlike most other companies, Tesla has always redacted descriptions of its crashes, claiming they were confidential business information.
It’s not clear why, but Tesla changed course this week, and the latest version of data released by NHTSA now details all 17 crashes Tesla has recorded since last year with its fledgling Robotaxi network.
In July 2025, shortly after Tesla launched the network for the first time in Austin, the company’s automated driving system (ADS) had trouble moving forward while parked on the street. The safety monitor requested assistance from Tesla’s remote assistance team, and a teleoperator “took control of the vehicle and slowly increased the speed of the vehicle and steered the Tesla ADS to the left side of the street.”
The teleoperator then “went over the curb and made contact with the metal fence.”
A similar sequence occurred in January 2026. While the Tesla ADS was driving the car down a straight street, the safety monitor “requested support to help navigate the car.”
According to information provided to NHTSA, “The teleoperator took control of the vehicle when ADS was disabled and continued down the street. The Tesla vehicle contacted the temporary barricade fora. At approximately 9 mph, it struck a construction site, left front fender, and broke a tire.”
Like other autonomous car companies like Waymo, most of the other accidents that haven’t been repaired recently involve Tesla Robotaxi cars crashing. included instead of causing accidents.
But at least two of them involve the Tesla Robotaxi clipping its mirrors into other cars. In one accident, the Tesla ADS from September 2025 failed to avoid hitting a dog that ran into the street. (Tesla reported that the dog was able to escape.)
In another accident in September 2025, a Tesla Robotaxis made an unprotected left turn into a parking lot and hit a metal chain. (Recently NHTSA closed the investigation A tendency for Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software to occasionally crash into parking bollards, chains and gates. Waymo also issued a related recall last year similar problem.)
While other robot taxi companies like Waymo and Zoox report more crashes than Tesla, Elon Musk’s company operates on a fraction of the scale. Details revealed in new unedited data this week may help explain why Tesla has been so slow to expand its nascent autonomous driving network. Musk himself was adopted last month The biggest limiting factor to Tesla’s grid expansion is “making sure things are absolutely secure,” and the company is “very cautious,” he said.
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