Tesla has released its most comprehensive safety performance data to date, just weeks after Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana publicly urged autonomous vehicle companies to share more information about their fleet operations.
In a newly launched section of its website, Tesla revealed that owners using its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software in North America experience a major collision once every 5 million miles, and a minor collision every 1.5 million miles. Tesla says these numbers significantly outperform national crash averages derived from National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) data, which show a major collision every 699,000 miles and a minor one every 229,000 miles, according to its interpretation.
Tesla has long published quarterly “vehicle safety reports,” but critics have said those reports lacked detail and focused heavily on Autopilot, a less advanced driver-assistance system designed for highways. Until now, Tesla had also provided almost no data about the Robotaxi program it has been quietly piloting in Austin, Texas.
Pressure From Waymo and the Industry
Waymo, currently the leading robotaxi operator in the U.S., has positioned itself as a transparency advocate. The company has published extensive safety findings showing its autonomous vehicles are five times safer than human drivers, and 12 times safer in pedestrian-related scenarios.
At TechCrunch Disrupt last month, Mawakana was asked which companies she believed were making roads safer.
“I don’t know who’s on that list, because they’re not telling us what’s happening with their fleets,” she said—without directly naming Tesla. She added that companies removing human drivers or relying on remote oversight have an obligation to be transparent.
Waymo did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday regarding Tesla’s newly released data or whether it meets the transparency standard Mawakana described.
Tesla Breaks Down FSD vs. Autopilot for the First Time
Tesla’s updated data offers a deeper look at the difference between Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (Supervised), the latter still requiring human oversight despite its name.
According to Tesla:
- FSD users experience a major crash every 2.9 million miles, compared to
505,000 miles per major crash for the average driver (NHTSA data). - FSD users have a minor collision every 986,000 miles, compared to
178,000 miles per minor crash for all drivers.
Tesla also clarified how it defines these collisions. Using the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (49 C.F.R. § 563.5):
- A major collision involves airbag deployment or activation of other irreversible safety restraints.
- Collisions are counted if FSD was active within five seconds before the crash, even if the system disengaged right before impact.
Tesla argues this provides a more accurate representation of real-world performance and accounts for scenarios where a human intervenes or the system aborts.
Quarterly Updates Ahead, But No Injury Data
Tesla says the safety dashboard will be updated quarterly and will use a rolling 12-month calculation to better reflect current trends. But the company clarified it will not publish injury data because it does not manually verify crash outcomes.
“Airbag deployments serve as a reliable proxy for collision severity,” Tesla wrote, emphasizing that metrics like injury reporting require detailed data collection beyond what is automatically transmitted by vehicles.
Tesla’s expanded transparency marks one of the biggest steps the company has taken in response to ongoing industry scrutiny. The move also puts it more directly in comparison with autonomous competitors like Waymo — potentially raising the bar for data sharing across the rapidly evolving driver-assistance and autonomous vehicle landscape.
