TL;DR: Self-Driving Teslas Rear-End Motorcyclists, Killing at Least 5
Brevity is the spirit of wit, and I am just not that witty. This is a long article, here is the gist of it:
- The NHTSA’s self-driving crash data reveals that Tesla’s self-driving technology is, by far, the most dangerous for motorcyclists, with five fatal crashes that we know of.
- This issue is unique to Tesla. Other self-driving manufacturers have logged zero motorcycle fatalities with the NHTSA in the same time frame.
- The crashes are overwhelmingly Teslas rear-ending motorcyclists.
Read our full analysis as we go case-by-case and connect the heavily redacted government data to news reports and police documents.
Oh, and read our thoughts about what this means for the robotaxi launch that is slated for Austin in less than 60 days.
Trucks in general have gotten so big they are pedestrian deathtraps
I imagine bicyclists must be effected as well if they’re on the road (as we should be, technically). As somebody who has already been literally inches away from being rear-ended, this makes me never want to bike in the US again.
Time to go to Netherlands.
*affected
Thank you for your service.
Affectively, does it realy mater if someone has slite misstakes in there righting?
I think i had a stroke reading that. Take your upvote and get out!
I’m not going to lie, I almost had a stroke writing it…
I upvoted every comment in this sub-thread shitshow and hated all of it.
Yer welcome!
human driving cars still target bicyclists on purpose so i don’t know see how teslas could be any worse…
p.s. painting a couple lines on the side of the road does not make a safe bike lane… they need a physical barrier separating the road from them… like how curbs separate the road from sidewalks…
this makes me never want to bike in the US again.
I live close enough to work for it to be a very reasonable biking distance. But there is no safe route. A high-speed “stroad” with a narrow little bike lane. It would only be a matter of time before some asshole with their face in their phone drifts into me.
I am deeply resentful of our automobile-centric infrastructure in the U.S. It’s bad for the environment, bad for our wallets, bad for our waistlines, and bad for physical safety.
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Propane cylinder. Mutually assured destruction.
It will do nothing. By the time a propane cylinder would rupture, even if we assume it actually ignites too, it would add very little to a massive crash that killed everyone and desintegrated everything.
Don’t stop… I’m almost there
Claymore and trip wire?
The new “Start Seeing Motorcycles” merch just dropped!
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If it’s a Tesla truck, I guess I could splash it with half a Dixie cup full of water…
Why is self-driving even allowed?
Because muh freedum, EU are a bunch of commies for not allowing this awesome innovation on their roads
(I fucking love living in the EU)
Robots don’t get drunk, or distracted, or text, or speed…
Anecdotally, I think the Waymos are more courteous than human drivers. Though waymo seems to be the best ones out so far, idk about the other services.
Don’t waymos have remote drivers that take control in unexpected situationsml?
They have remote drivers that CAN take control in very corner case situations that the software can’t handle. The vast majority of driving is don’t without humans in the loop.
So they say
They don’t even do that, according to Waymo’s claims.
They can suggest what the car should do, but they aren’t actually doing it. The car is in complete control.
Its a nuanced difference, but it is a difference. A Waymo employee never takes control of or operates the vehicle.
Interesting! I did not know that - I assumed the teleoperators took direct control, but that makes much more sense for latency reasons (among others)
Because the march of technological advancement is inevitable?
In light of recent (and let’s face it, long ago cases) Tesla’s “Full Self Driving” needs to be downgraded to level 2 at best.
Level 2: Partial Automation
The vehicle can handle both steering and acceleration/deceleration, but the driver must remain engaged and ready to take control.
Pretty much the same level as other brands self driving feature.
The other brands, such as Audi and VW, work much better than Tesla’s system. Their LIDAR systems aren’t blinded by fog, and rain the way the Tesla is. Someone recently tested an Audi with its system against a Tesla with its system. The Tesla failed either 3/5 or 4/5 tests. The Audi passed 3/5 or 4/5. Neither system is perfect, but the one that doesn’t rely on just cameras is clearly superior.
Edit: it was Mark Rober.
It’s hard to tell, but from about 15 minutes of searching, I was unable to locate any consumer vehicles that include a LIDAR system. Lots of cars include RADAR, for object detection, even multiple RADAR systems for parking. There may be some which includes a TimeOfFlight sensor, which is like LIDAR, but static and lacks the resolution/fidelity. My Mach-E which has level 2 automation uses a combination of computer vision, RADAR and GPS. I was unable to locate a LIDAR sensor for the vehicle.
The LIDAR system in Mark’s video is quite clearly a pre-production device that is not affiliated with the vehicle manufacturer it was being tested on.
Adding, after more searching, it looks like the polestar 3, some trim levels of the Audi A8 and the Volvo EX90 include a LiDAR sensor. Curious to see how the consumer grade tech works out in real world.
Please do not mistake this comment as “AI/computer vision” evangelisim. I currently have a car that uses those technologies for automation, and I would not and do not trust my life or anyone else’s to that system.
Mercedes uses LiDAR. They also operate the sole Level 3 driver automation system in the USA. Two models only, the new S-Class and EQS sedans.
Tesla alleges they’ll be Level 4+ in Austin in 60 days, and just skip Level 3 altogether. We’ll see.
Yeah, keep in mind that Elon couldn’t get level 3 working in a closed, pre-mapped circuit. The robotaxis were just remotely operated.
The way I understand it, is that Audi, Volvo, and VW have had the hardware in place for a few years. They are collecting real world data about how we drive before they allow the systems to be used at all. There are also legal issues with liability.
Because the only thing worse than self driving is human driving.
Humans are terrible drivers. The open question is are self driving cars overall safer than human driven cars. So far the only people talking either don’t have data, or have reason cherry pick only parts of the data that make self driving look good. This is the one exception where someone seemingly independent has done analysis - the question is are they unbiased, or are they cherry picking data to make self driving look bad (I’m not familiar with the source so I can’t answer that)
Either way more study is needed.
Humans are terrible. The human eyes and brain are good at detecting certain things though that allow a reaction where computer vision, especially only using one method of detection, fails often. There are times when an automated system will prevent a problem before a human could even see it. So far neither is the clear winner, human driving just has a legacy that automation has to beat by a great length and not just be good enough.
On the topic of human drivers, I think most on the road drive reactively and not based on prediction and anticipation. Given the speed and possible detection methods, a well designed automated system should be excelling at this. It costs more and it more complex to design such a thing, so we’re getting the bare bones of the best minimum tech can give us right now, which again is not a replacement for all cases.
I am absolutely biased. It’s me, I’m the source :)
I’m a motorcyclist, and I don’t want to die. Also just generally, motorcyclists deserve to get where they are going safely.
I agree with you. Self-driving cars will overall greatly improve highway safety.
I disagree with you when you suggest that pointing out flaws in the technology is evidence of bias, or “cherry picking to make self driving look bad.” I think we can improve on the technology by pointing out its systemic defects. If it hits motorcyclists, take it off the road, fix it, and then save lives by putting it back on the road.
That’s the intention of the coverage, at least: I am hoping to apply pressure to improve rather than remove. Read my Waymo coverage, I’m actually a big automation enthusiast, because fewer crashes is a good thing.
I wasn’t trying to suggest that you are biased, only that I have no clue and so it is possible you are somehow unfairly doing something.
Bribes to local governments and police, mostly.
Elon needs to take responsibility for their death.
That’s why Tesla’s full self driving is officially still a level 2 cruise control. But of course they promise to jump directly to level 4 soon™.
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Good to know, I’ll stay away from those damn things when I ride.
Good luck. They’re fucking everywhere, at least where I live.
I already do. Flip a coin: Heads, the car is operating itself and is therefore being operated by a moron. Tails, the owner is driving it manually and therefore it is being operated by a moron.
Just be sure to carefully watch your six when you’re sitting at a stoplight. I’ve gotten out of the habit of sitting right in the center of the lane, because the odds are getting ever higher that I’ll have to scoot out of the way of some imbecile who’s coming in hot. That’s hard to do when your front tire is 24" away from the license plate of the car in front of you.
For me it depends which bike I’m riding. If it’s my 49cc scooter, I’ll sit to the very right side of the lane for a quick escape while watching my mirrors like a hawk. On my XR500, I’ll just filter to the front (legal in Utah).
I filter to the front on my leg powered bike, most traffic light setups here have a region for bikes at the front of the cars.
Commuting in CA feels like I’m navigating a minefield 🤡
For what it’s worth, it really isn’t clear if this is FSD or AP based on the constant mention of self driving even when it’s older collisions when it would definitely been AP, and is even listed as AP if you click on the links to the crash.
So these may all be AP, or one or two might be FSD, it’s unclear.
Every Tesla has AP as well, so the likelihood of that being the case is higher.
In this case, does it matter? Both are supposed to follow a vehicle at a safe distance
I’d be more interested in how it changes over time, as new software is pushed. While it’s important that know it had problems judging distance to a motorcycle, it’s more important to know whether it still does
In this case, does it matter? Both are supposed to follow a vehicle at a safe distance
I think it does matter, while both are supposed to follow at safe distances, the FSD stack is doing it in a completely different way. They haven’t really been making any major updates to AP for many years now, all focus has been on FSD. I think the only real changes it’s had for quite awhile have been around making sure people are paying attention better.
AP is looking at the world frame by frame, each individual camera on it’s own, while FSD is taking the input of all cameras, turning into 3d vector space, and then driving based off that. Doing that on city streets and highways is only a pretty recent development. Updates for doing it this way on highway and streets only went out to all cars with FSD in the past few months. For a long time it was on city streets only.
I’d be more interested in how it changes over time, as new software is pushed.
I think that’s why it’s important to make a real distinction between AP and FSD today (and specifically which FSD versions)
They’re wholly different systems, one that gets older every day, and one that keeps getting better every few months. Making an article like this that groups them together over the span of years muddies the water on what / if any progress has been made.
Fair enough!
At least one of the fatalities is Full-Self Driving (it was cited by name in the police reports). The remainder are Autopilot. So, both systems kill motorcyclists. Tesla requests this data redacted from their NHTSA reporting, which specifically makes it difficult for consumers to measure which system is safer or if incremental safety improvements are actually being made.
You’re placing a lot if faith that the incremental updates are improvements without equivalent regressions. That data is specifically being concealed from you, and I think you should probably ask why. If there was good news behind those redactions, they wouldn’t be redactions.
I didn’t publish the software version data point because I agree with AA5B, it doesn’t matter. I honestly don’t care how it works. I care that it works well enough to safely cohabit the road with my manual transmission cromagnon self.
I’m not a “Tesla reporter,” I’m not trying to cover the incremental changes in their software versions. Plenty of Tesla fans doing that already. It only has my attention at all because it’s killing vulnerable road users, and for that analysis we don’t actually need to know which self-driving system version is killing people, just the make of car it is installed on.
I’d say it’s a pretty important distinction to know if one or both systems have a problem and the level of how bad that problem is.
Also are you referencing the one in Seattle in 2024 for FSD? The CNBC article says FSD, but the driver said AP.
And especially back then, there’s also an important distinction of how they work.
FSD on highways wasn’t released until November 2024, and even then not everyone got it right away. So even if FSD was enabled, the crash may have been under AP.
Edit: Also if it was FSD for real (that 2024 crash would have had to happen on city streets, not a highway) then thats 1 motorcycle fatality in 3.6 billion miles. The other 4 happened over 10 billion miles. Is that not an improvement? (edit again: I should say we can’t tell it’s an improvement yet as we’d have to pass 5 billion, so the jury is still out I guess IF that crash was really on FSD)
Edit: I will cede though that as a motorcyclist, you can’t know what the Tesla is using, so you’d have to assume the worst.
Police report for 2024 case attached, it is also linked in the original article: https://www.opb.org/article/2025/01/15/tesla-may-face-less-accountability-for-crashes-under-trump/
It was Full Self Driving, according to the police. They know because they downloaded the data off the vehicle’s computer. The motorcyclist was killed on a freeway merge ramp.
All the rest is beyond my brief. Thought you might like the data to chew on, though.
The motorcyclist was killed on a freeway merge ramp.
I’d say that means it’s a very good chance that yes, while FSD was enabled, the crash happened under the older AP mode of driving, as it wasn’t until November 2024 that it was moved over to the new FSD neural net driving code.. I was wrong here, it actually was FSD then, it just wasn’t end to end neural nets then like it is now.Also yikes… the report says the AEB kicked in, and the driver overrode it by pressing on the accelerator!
That’s not good though, right? “We have the technology to save lives, it works on all of our cars, and we have the ability to push it to every car in the fleet. But these people haven’t paid extra for it, so…”
Well, only 1 or 2 of those were in a time frame where I’d consider FSD superior to AP, it’s a more recent development where that’s likely the case.
But to your point, at some point I expect Tesla to use the FSD software for AP for the exact reasons you mentioned. My guess is they’d just do something like disable making left/right turns , so you wouldn’t be able to use it outside of straight stretches like AP today.
if only there was a government department to investigate these kinds of things… Too soon?
Disbanded!
… for effieciency!
I wonder if a state court judge could mandate its use as unsafe?
They are illegal in every developed country.
But muh innovation! How are genius CEOs supposed to innovate if they can’t use the public at large as guinea pigs??
Sounds like NHTSA needs a visit from DOGE!
Gotta get rid of the evidence.
the cybertruck is sharp enough to cut a deer in half, surely a biker is just as vulnerable.
I wonder if it’s happened yet
There was an article where he sliced a deer in half
It’s because the system has to rely on visual cues, since Tesla’s have no radar. The system looks at the tail light when it’s dark to gauge the distance from the vehicle. And since some bikes have a double light the system thinks it’s a car in front of them that is far away, when in reality it’s a bike up close. Also remember the ai is trained on human driving behavior which Tesla records from their customers. And we all know how well the average human drives around two wheeled vehicles.
Musk = POS Nazi. Who couldn’t care less about people being killed by his shit companies.
Five years ago, you could not have brought this up without Musk simps defending it.
On Reddit perhaps
There seems to be people/bots down-voting critical takes up and down this very thread. What chumps.
