TL;DR: Tesla’s fledgling robotaxi service logged five new crashes in December and January, bringing the total to 14 since launching in Austin, Texas, last summer. The crash rate? Nearly four times higher than human drivers—a serious problem for a company betting its future on autonomous vehicles. It’s raising a question the entire industry can’t yet answer: Are robotaxis actually safer than having humans behind the wheel?

What happened: These latest Tesla crashes in Austin involved “a collision with a fixed object at 17 mph while the vehicle was driving straight, a crash with a bus while the Tesla was stationary, a collision with a heavy truck at 4 mph, and two separate incidents where the Tesla backed into objects, one into a pole or tree at 1 mph and another into a fixed object at 2 mph,” according to Electrek.

Based on the roughly 800,000 cumulative paid miles Tesla has logged, Electrek estimated that its robotaxi fleet is crashing once every 57,000 miles—nearly four times more often than Tesla says human drivers crash. “That is not a rounding error or an early-program hiccup,” says Electrek. “It is a fundamental performance gap.”

It’s not just Tesla: Zoox and Waymo have also made headlines for incidents involving their driverless vehicles. Just last month, Waymo reported that one of its vehicles struck a child near a school in Santa Monica, California, causing minor injuries (though it claimed the vehicle braked quicker than a human driver likely would have). Federal regulators are also investigating numerous instances of Waymo robotaxis illegally passing stopped school buses.

The stakes are high: Musk has bet Tesla’s future on pivoting to AI and robotics, with big plans to grow its robotaxi fleet. Investors have also poured hundreds of billions of dollars into the robotaxi sector (see Waymo’s latest $16 billion fundraising round).

AVs have long been touted as a way to make US roadways—where tens of thousands of people die every year—safer for human drivers and pedestrians. The underlying promise of the tech is that they are better drivers than their error-prone human counterparts; they don’t drink and drive or succumb to road rage, for example. Waymo claims it has achieved “a 90% reduction in serious injury crashes” across 127 million miles of fully autonomous driving, compared to the average human driver.

But as David Zipper, a senior fellow at the MIT Mobility Initiative, wrote in Bloomberg: “We don’t yet know whether a robotaxi trip is more or less likely to result in a crash than an equivalent one driven by a human.” There’s also evidence that people hold self-driving vehicles to a higher standard than their fellow humans—which means even if robotaxis match human safety records, it might not be enough to win public trust.

What’s next: Waymo now provides more than 400,000 weekly rides in six US metro areas and plans to launch in 20 new cities this year. Tesla execs say they want to expand robotaxis to seven new operating areas in 2026. As these companies push for mainstream adoption, expect increased scrutiny over whether the safety records they’re touting actually hold up. —JG

The toolbar tweak you’ve been sleeping on

Any frequent Microsoft Office user knows it’s frustrating when you have to go on a wild goose chase looking for a certain tool or command you want to use. Tech Brew reader Stacey from Boston, Massachusetts, has a tip for keeping all of your go-to’s in one readily available space (because life's too short to hunt for Format Cells).

“If you want to make Excel, Word, and PowerPoint feel so much easier to use, try customizing your Quick Access Toolbar,” Stacey tells us. “It’s a tiny change that makes a huge difference.”

On PC: Click the small dropdown arrow in the title bar and select the commands you want → Add. (Or for a quicker method, right-click any command or button in the ribbon → Add to Quick Access Toolbar.) To customize more, use File → Options → Quick Access Toolbar or dropdown arrow → More Commands. In the customization menu, use the up and down arrows to rearrange your commands and Remove for any you want to ditch. To choose a position for your QAT, click the dropdown arrow → Show Above the Ribbon or Show Below the Ribbon.

On Mac: Click the app name in the menu bar → Preferences → Ribbon & Toolbar. Choose Quick Access Toolbar and select which tools to Add or Remove. For more options click the … symbol → More Commands and customize from there. Hold down Command and drag toolbar items into the order you want. Unlike on Windows, the QAT is fixed above the ribbon on Macs and cannot be moved below it.

Why it works: The Quick Access Toolbar has eliminated extra clicks for Stacey’s most-used tools, saving her time and improving her workflow. “It feels like having a personalized command center,” she says. “Everything I use regularly is always right there, and it just makes working in each app faster, cleaner, and so much more ‘me.’”

A few caveats: The Quick Access Toolbar isn’t “one size fits all” across all platforms, meaning you’ll need to customize it separately in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.—and not every command is available to add to your QAT. Plus, your customizations stay on your computer, so if you use multiple devices, you’ll have to set them up on each. —CM

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“Alpha School” isn’t the name of some YouTube channel showing off the correct, manly way to open a water bottle. Somehow, it’s worse: It’s an expensive private K-12 network that uses AI to teach core subjects like math, reading, and science, charging up to $75,000 a year for the privilege of a curriculum riddled with confusing or nonsensical AI-generated material. And business appears to be booming. Though it doesn’t share enrollment numbers, Alpha School has more than 20 campuses currently or soon-to-be operating across eight states.

A 404 Media investigation published yesterday paints a grim picture of an educational franchise that treats students like "guinea pigs,” according to a former school employee. While the school uses human guides to assist students, its main pitch is that its AI tutors can teach standardized testing material using a “personalized” lesson plan in just two hours. That’s right—in less time than it takes to get through a Costco checkout line, your child can score a 1600 on the SAT. Some of the information its AI teachers use appears to be illegally scraped from other online courses, and the lessons often contain mistakes—which the school apparently uses AI to fix up.

Oh, and then there’s all the disturbing student surveillance. The school uses apps that monitor and record kids’ screen activity, even tracking their mouse movements. What happens to these recordings? They reportedly get dumped into a Google Drive folder that anyone with a link can access. Sounds like Alpha could use a quick two-hour course of its own—one explaining why spying on kids is, in fact, bad. —WK

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