This is 100% false. Tesla FSD has effectively zero at-fault fatalities whereas other systems have actually killed people for failure to identify stationary vehicles.
Tesla on the other hand does have deaths from autopilot not seeing stationary objects. This is because the autopilot software is designed to run on much older computers found in early teslas. It doesn't run the advanced AI they use for FSD.
The reason that tesla has high NHTSA reports is because they have the most miles and they are the only brand reliably reporting accidents at scale.
NHTSA requires you report adas accidents but they don't mandate that your car remotely detect them. Therefore you just never know about them.
Rivian deliberately chooses to not enable their car to remotely collect crash data which is critical for safely training these edge cases. Because of that they may have possibly killed or seriously injured someone with their ADAS and you'll never know about it
I can't be bothered calling out your Tesla fanboyism post by post anymore, so I had an AI pull your claims together and check them against the actual regulator filings.
Here's the summary.
"Tesla FSD has effectively zero at-fault fatalities."
Tesla's own filings to NHTSA say otherwise. July 2026 was the worst month on record for Tesla driver assist crashes. 236 reported to federal regulators, four of them fatal, and in every one Tesla's own data says Autopilot or FSD was engaged. In June, Tesla admitted FSD was on when a Model 3 killed a 76 year old in Katy, Texas, then blamed the driver for flooring the accelerator. NHTSA opened its own Special Crash Investigation to pull the event data recorder independently, because what Tesla posts on X is its own interpretation of its own logs. Two weeks ago Tesla's SGO filing on a 2021 Model Y that crossed a median and killed a man was marked "Verified Engaged", confirmed through Tesla's own telematics. Last Wednesday a pedestrian was killed on I-80 in Vallejo and the driver told CHP the car was in FSD. You can call all of those "not at-fault" if you want, but nobody can check, because the software field is redacted and Tesla decided what its cars did in those fatal crashes is a trade secret. "Effectively zero at-fault" isn't a finding. It's a claim built so it can't be checked.
"Tesla is the only brand reliably reporting accidents at scale."
The regulator disagrees. Under the 2021 federal order, crash reports are due within one to five days depending on severity. NHTSA said Tesla filed numerous reports months after the incidents, in batches or on a rolling basis, and opened a formal Audit Query to find out why and whether more crash reports are still unfiled. Separately, NHTSA escalated its FSD investigation to an Engineering Analysis covering 3.2 million vehicles and said Tesla's data limitation could have led to under-reporting of crashes. There are now three concurrent federal investigations into FSD: visibility failures, traffic violations, and crash reporting gaps. The company you're calling the gold standard of transparency is the one being investigated for the opposite.
"The deaths were Autopilot on old computers, not FSD."
The Engineering Analysis is into FSD, not Autopilot. NHTSA is looking at nine crashes, one of them fatal, where the software failed to detect poor driving conditions and alert the driver in time. Investigators found it failed to notice common road conditions that impaired camera visibility, or warn the driver, until immediately before the crash. It covers FSD equipped vehicles from model year 2016 through 2026. That's not an "old computers" problem. It's a camera only perception failure in glare and fog, which is exactly the gap lidar and radar exist to cover.
"There is basically no evidence that these extra sensors even do anything."
Waymo publishes its full data and methodology against human benchmarks. Over 270 million fully autonomous miles through June 2026, 82% fewer injury causing crashes regardless of fault, and 95% fewer serious injury or worse crashes, all built on the same NHTSA Standing General Order crash data, with rates per million miles broken out by city. Tesla publishes a page of hand picked avoidance clips and a self reported miles between crashes number with no published methodology and no denominator anyone can audit. One of those is evidence. The other is marketing. And your actual source for "lidar doesn't help" is a Bilibili video of a hacked, unsupported build running a handful of scenarios in China.
"Rivian may have possibly killed or seriously injured someone and you'll never know."
You have zero evidence for this. You accused a manufacturer of covering up a death with "may have possibly" doing all the work, in the same post where you demand ironclad proof before anyone says a word about Tesla.
You joined 17 days ago and you've made 42 posts, nearly all of them about Tesla, in a Lucid forum. Post what you want. But when you lead with "100% false" and follow it with claims the federal regulator's own filings contradict, expect to be held to the bar you set.
Sources:
July 2026 set a record for Tesla driver-assist crashes: 236, including 4 fatal ones the public never connected to Autopilot or FSD.
electrek.co
Tesla now admits FSD was engaged when a Model 3 killed a 76-year-old in Katy, Texas, but blames the driver for flooring the accelerator to 73 mph.
electrek.co
A Tesla crossed a Route 55 median and killed Phillip Eastman, a Delco school board member. Tesla's data says its driver-assist was engaged, and redacted.
electrek.co
NHTSA escalated its Tesla FSD investigation to an Engineering Analysis covering 3.2M vehicles after finding the system fails to detect degraded visibility from glare and fog.
electrek.co
NHTSA probes Tesla over delayed crash reports linked to driver-assistance systems, raising questions about safety reporting and regulatory compliance.
www.cbtnews.com
Across Waymo’s 270 million autonomous miles, the data is unequivocal: at least 841 people* avoided injuries they otherwise would have sustained in a traffic cra...
waymo.com
