Tesla finally reveals what happened in 17 ‘Robotaxi’ crashes

Tesla has quietly unredacted all 17 of its autonomous driving crash narratives filed with NHTSA, revealing for the first time what actually happened in each incident. The automaker had been the only ADS operator to fully redact its crash reports, marking every single narrative as “confidential business information.”

The data shows what we always suspected: most of Tesla’s crashes were not the fault of the autonomous system. But there are some genuinely concerning incidents buried in there.

Tesla was alone in hiding crash data

For the better part of a year, Tesla was the only autonomous vehicle operator filing crash reports with NHTSA under the agency’s Standing General Order 2021-01 that completely redacted its crash narratives. Every single one of Tesla’s reports contained the same boilerplate text: “[REDACTED, MAY CONTAIN CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS INFORMATION].”

Meanwhile, Waymo, Zoox, Avride, May Mobility, and every other ADS operator provided detailed, multi-paragraph accounts of what happened in each crash.