Tesla robotaxis have crashed at least twice since July 2025 while a teleoperator was remotely driving the vehicles, according to newly unredacted information submitted to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
Both crashes occurred in Austin, Texas, and occurred at low speeds. In each case, there was a security monitor behind the wheel and no passengers were onboard.
The new information comes just months after Tesla told lawmakers that it would allow remote operators to drive one of the company’s vehicles as long as they stay below 10 mph. “This capability enables Tesla to quickly relocate a vehicle that may be in a state of compromise, reducing the need to wait for a first responder or Tesla field representative to manually recover the vehicle,” the company said at the time.
Like other companies working on autonomous vehicle technology, Tesla is required to submit detailed information about any accidents to NHTSA. However, unlike most other companies, Tesla had always redacted the details of its crashes, claiming that 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 provides descriptive details of all 17 accidents Tesla has recorded with its nascent robotaxi network since last year.
In July 2025, when Tesla first began operating the network in Austin, the company’s automated driving system (ADS) apparently had trouble moving while stopped on the road. The safety monitor requested help from Tesla’s remote assistance team, and a teleoperator “took control of the vehicle and slowly increased the vehicle’s speed and steered the Tesla ADS to the left side of the road.”
The teleoperator then “raised the curb and contacted the metal fence.”
A similar sequence was played in January 2026. The Tesla ADS was driving the vehicle straight down the road when the safety monitor “requested support to assist with vehicle navigation.”
According to data submitted to NHTSA, “With ADS turned off, the teleoperator took control of the vehicle and proceeded straight down the road. The Tesla vehicle made contact with a temporary barricade for a construction site at approximately 9 MPH, causing a scratch on the front-left fender and tire.”
Similar to other autonomous vehicle companies like Waymo, the majority of other newly unreported accidents involve crashes of Tesla robotaxi vehicles. In Instead of causing accidents.
But at least two of them involve a Tesla robotaxi that points its mirrors at other vehicles. In one accident, from September 2025, a Tesla ADS was unable to avoid colliding with a dog running across the road. (Tesla reported that the dog was able to escape.)
In another accident in September 2025, a Tesla robotaxi made an unsafe left turn in a parking lot and struck a metal chain. (NHTSA recently closed an investigation into the tendency of Tesla’s full self-driving software to collide with parking lot bollards, chains and gates. Waymo also issued a recall last year related to a similar problem.)
While other robotaxi companies like Waymo and Zoox have reported more accidents than Tesla, Elon Musk’s company is operating on a much smaller scale. Details revealed this week in newly unpublished data may help explain why Tesla has been so slow growing its nascent autonomous ride-hailing network. Musk himself acknowledged last month that “making sure things are completely secure” is the biggest limiting factor for expanding Tesla’s network, adding that the company is being “very cautious.”
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