Tesla Sets Record For Number Of Accidents Involving FSD Autopilot
Credit: Tesla
Tesla reported 207 accidents involving its driver assistance systems in a single month—a record number in the company’s history. This data is based on Tesla’s accident reports submitted to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
It’s noteworthy that the number of accidents involving Tesla vehicles with FSD in all of 2021 did not exceed 157, but now the figure has reached 207 incidents in just one month. Tesla is responsible for 3,763 accidents in the United States involving autonomous vehicles. This represents approximately 85% of the total number of accidents involving FSD in all of last year.
While the number of accidents involving FSD reached 1,043 in all of last year, 826 incidents were recorded in the first half of this year alone. Formally, in a year-on-year comparison, accident statistics have increased by 73% since the beginning of this year. Such a dynamic is, by and large, inevitable given the expansion of the Tesla fleet of FSD-equipped vehicles. Moreover, these vehicles collectively travel more during the reporting period than previously observed, and therefore the likelihood of errors in the operation of the automation naturally increases.
Since 2019, Tesla has withheld information on 99.9% of its 3,763 accident reports annually, citing confidential commercial data. The “Severity” field confirms this: the vast majority of accidents are recorded as “Unknown” because the basic details are obtained from telematics data, and the description is hidden. The “Software Version” field is also hidden, making it impossible to distinguish between Autopilot accidents and FSD accidents in the publicly available file, although the rapid adoption of FSD and the recent removal of Autopilot from new vehicles make it a likely cause of the recent spike in accidents.
