The Tesla Robotaxis has crashed at least twice since July 2025 while a remote operator was driving the vehicles remotely, according to recently unredacted information submitted to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
Both accidents happened in Austin, Texas and occurred at low speeds. In any case, there was a safety screen behind the steering wheel and no passengers.
The new information comes just a few months after Tesla he told lawmakers that allows remote operators to pilot one of the company’s vehicles, as long as they stay below 10 miles per hour. “This capability allows Tesla to immediately move a vehicle that may be in a compromised position, thereby reducing the need to wait for a first responder or Tesla field representative to manually recover the vehicle,” the company said at the time.
Tesla, like other companies working on autonomous vehicle technology, is required to submit detailed information about any accidents to NHTSA. Unlike most of these other companies, however, Tesla has always redacted its accident descriptions, claiming it was confidential business information.
It’s not clear why, but Tesla changed course this week, and the latest version of data released by the NHTSA now provides a narrative account of all 17 accidents Tesla has recorded since last year with its nascent Robotaxi network.
In July 2025, shortly after Tesla first began operating the network in Austin, the company’s automated driving system (ADS) apparently had trouble moving forward while stopped on a road. The safety monitor called for help from Tesla’s remote assistance team, and a remote operator “took control of the vehicle and gradually increased the speed of the vehicle and steered the Tesla ADS left to the left side of the road.”
The remote operator then “went up the curb and made contact with a metal fence.”
A similar sequence took place in January 2026. The Tesla ADS was driving the vehicle straight down a road when the safety display “requested support to help navigate the vehicle.”
“The operator assumed control of the vehicle when ADS stopped and proceeded straight down the road. The Tesla vehicle contacted a temporary construction site barrier at approximately 9 mph, scraping the front left fender and tire,” according to the NHTSA filing.
Similar to other autonomous vehicle companies like Waymo, most of the other recent unfixed accidents involve crashes of Tesla Robotaxi vehicles in instead of causing crashes.
But at least two of them involve a Tesla Robotaxi that cuts its mirrors into other vehicles. In one accident, from September 2025, the Tesla ADS failed to avoid being hit by a dog that ran into the road. (Tesla reported that the dog was able to run away.)
In another September 2025 accident, a Tesla Robotaxi made an unprotected left turn in a parking lot and crashed into a metal chain. (NHTSA recently closed an investigation into the occasional tendency of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software to crash into parking posts, chains and gates. Waymo also issued a recall last year over a similar problem.)
While other robotaxi companies like Waymo and Zoox have reported more accidents than Tesla, Elon Musk’s company operates on a fraction of the scale. Details revealed this week in the newly unredacted data may explain why Tesla has been so slow to scale its emerging autonomous network. Musk himself he admitted last month that “making sure things are secure” is the biggest limiting factor for expanding Tesla’s network, saying the company is “very careful.”
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This does not affect our editorial independence.
