Tesla just released its most detailed safety report ever, claiming Full Self-Driving users crash every 5 million miles compared to the national average of 699,000 miles. The timing isn't coincidental - it comes weeks after Waymo's co-CEO challenged the industry to prove their safety claims with real data, pointedly asking why companies aren't being transparent about their autonomous vehicle performance.
Tesla just threw down the transparency gauntlet in the autonomous vehicle wars. The company dropped its most comprehensive safety report Friday, finally answering years of criticism about its "paltry" quarterly safety updates and directly responding to a challenge from Waymo leadership.
The numbers paint a striking picture. According to Tesla's new safety website, North American drivers using Full Self-Driving (Supervised) travel around 5 million miles before a major collision and 1.5 million miles before minor incidents. Compare that to the national average from NHTSA data: major crashes every 699,000 miles and minor ones every 229,000 miles.
This isn't just Tesla flexing its safety metrics - it's a direct response to industry pressure. At last month's TechCrunch Disrupt, Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana threw down a challenge that reverberated through Silicon Valley's autonomous vehicle community. When asked to name companies making roads safer, she didn't mince words: "I don't know who's on that list, because they're not telling us what's happening with their fleets."
Mawakana's comments, delivered without naming Tesla directly, cut to the heart of the industry's credibility problem. "If you're going to put vehicles on the road, and you're going to remove the driver from behind the wheel," she said, "it is incumbent upon you to be transparent about what's happening. And if you are not being transparent, then it is my view that you are not doing what is necessary in order to actually earn the right to make the road safer."
The timing of Tesla's response speaks volumes about how seriously the company took that criticism. For years, Tesla's quarterly safety reports have been repeatedly panned by analysts for focusing on Autopilot rather than the more advanced FSD system. Autopilot, designed primarily for highways where crash rates are naturally lower, painted an incomplete picture of Tesla's autonomous capabilities.
Now Tesla's finally broken out the data that matters. The new metrics show FSD users travel about 2.9 million miles between major collisions, while NHTSA data indicates all drivers average 505,000 miles per major collision. For minor incidents, FSD users see crashes every 986,000 miles compared to the national average of 178,000 miles.
