Under a Standing General Order issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), companies testing or deploying Automated Driving Systems (ADS) on public roads are required to report crash data. A dive into the latest publicly available incident reports offers a look not just at how these vehicles are crashing, but how different companies approach transparency.
Comparing Tesla's data against competitors like Waymo and Zoox reveals stark differences in fleet exposure, the nature of the collisions, and a massive gap in public reporting practices.
The Incident Volume
Looking at the raw numbers, the dataset contains 825 total reported ADS incidents. Waymo accounts for the vast majority of these, with 697 reported crashes. They are followed by Avride (41), Zoox (32), and Tesla (18).
It is important to provide context for these figures. Waymo operates a massive, fully autonomous robotaxi fleet actively driving millions of miles in densely populated urban centers like San Francisco, Phoenix, and Los Angeles.
Their higher incident volume is a direct reflection of this massive fleet exposure in chaotic environments. Tesla's relatively low number of 18 incidents in this specific ADS reporting category also reflects the much smaller and slower-than-expected rollout of Robotaxi.
Incidents with FSD (Supervised) are not counted in this dataset, as they are not from an Unsupervised L4 Autonomous Vehicle but rather from an L2+ system that is still supervised by consumers.
What Do AVs Hit Most?
The NHTSA data categorizes what the autonomous vehicles collided with, shedding light on the different challenges these systems face.
Because of their heavy urban presence, Waymo vehicles primarily collide with standard city traffic. Their data shows 229 collisions with passenger cars, 161 with SUVs, and dozens of impacts with heavy trucks and city buses.
Tesla's 18 reported crashes show a slightly different pattern. The most common crash partner for a Tesla in this dataset was an "Other Fixed Object" with five incidents, followed closely by four collisions with SUVs. Tesla also reported single incidents involving a cyclist, an animal, and a bus.
Injuries and Engagement
Fortunately, the vast majority of all reported ADS crashes resulted in property damage only.
For Tesla, 16 of the 18 incidents involved no injuries. There were only two reported injuries: one minor injury requiring hospitalization and one minor injury without hospitalization. Notably, NHTSA tracks whether the autonomous system was actually driving at the time of the impact. For all 18 of Tesla's reported crashes, the system status was marked as "Verified Engaged."
Waymo's massive sample size naturally includes more variance. Out of their 697 incidents, 613 resulted in property damage only. However, the data does show 23 incidents involving injuries that required hospitalization, 51 incidents with minor injuries not requiring a hospital visit, and one reported fatality.
Tesla’s Transparency Gap
Perhaps the most glaring takeaway from the dataset is not the physical crash data, but the Narrative section of the reports. NHTSA allows companies to provide a detailed written account explaining exactly how the crash occurred.
Competitors like Waymo and Zoox utilize this section to provide detailed, multi-paragraph accounts of the incidents. Waymo's narratives frequently detail complex lane changes, intersection behavior, the specific actions of human drivers in other vehicles, and whether passengers were wearing seatbelts. This level of detail provides valuable context for regulators and the public to understand the system's limitations and safety.
Tesla takes the exact opposite approach. The automaker completely redacts its crash narratives. Every single Tesla narrative in the public dataset is replaced with the same boilerplate text: [REDACTED, MAY CONTAIN CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS INFORMATION].
By shielding the specifics of its crashes behind confidentiality claims, Tesla makes it impossible for the public to understand what went wrong in those 18 incidents, in stark contrast to the open reporting of its industry peers. Tesla typically focuses on engineering disciplines and often falls short in customer service, and this is likely the reason why these areas aren’t filled out.
