Recent reports from publications like Wiredand Engadgethave highlighted that Tesla's Robotaxis have the capability to be driven by humans remotely. While some critics have pointed to this as a flaw in the autonomy narrative, a closer look at the actual policy reveals that this teleoperation feature is a highly practical and essential safeguard for real-world driving. Solving Autonomy in a Flawed World The transition to fully autonomous vehicles is bound to encounter unpredictable edge cases. We have already seen this play out with competitors like Waymo. In several widely publicized incidents, multiple autonomous vehicles have become completely confused in intersections, resulting in traffic jams consisting entirely of driverless cars. In some of these situations, remote operators have had to manually guide vehicles out of their gridlock situation, and early on during the inception of the now-defunct Cruise network, the company even required manual physical intervention from employees to fix stuck vehicles. The consequences of these gridlocks become exponentially worse when emergency vehicles are involved. An autonomous car blocking an ambulance or a firetruck because it cannot interpret a complex traffic diversion is a massive public safety hazard. Tesla's remote control capabilities are designed specifically to prevent this exact nightmare scenario. Final Escalation The details of Tesla's strategy were recently outlined in correspondence between Karen Steakley, Tesla's director of public policy and business development, and Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts. Steakley explained that Tesla employs highly trained Remote Assistance Operators at its facilities in Austin and Palo Alto to monitor the Robotaxi fleet. According to Steakley, these operators act as a strict redundancy measure in rare cases. They are only authorized to temporarily assume direct vehicle control as the final escalation maneuver after all other available intervention actions have been exhausted. This means the human operators are not ferrying passengers to