A Tesla employee at the automaker’s Austin factory was attacked by a robot two years ago, leaving them bleeding on the factory floor. This is according to a new report by The Information. This is just one of a series of incidents at Giga Texas, the sprawling Austin factory that is instrumental to Tesla’s goal of manufacturing a sub-$25,000 electric car.
This series of injuries reported by The Information offers a rare peek into the hidden dangers of the U.S. workplace and serves as a warning for what could happen in the future as manufacturing becomes more automated.
The report states that an engineer had begun to work on three robots in 2021 without realizing that only two of them had been shut off. According to The Information, citing two unnamed witnesses, the third robot kept moving and pinned the engineer against a surface, injuring them and leaving them bleeding. The victim was able to escape and fell down a scrap-metal chute after another worker hit an emergency stop button. Tesla did not provide a comment to Fortune on the incident.
At the Giga Texas factory, there appeared to be more danger for workers than in other auto plants, according to The Information’s analysis of federal data. The injury rate at the Austin factory was higher than the median injury rate at similar factories. Additionally, the Fremont factory had an even higher injury rate.
More robots, more injuries?
The incidents bring into question the safety concerns surrounding the increasing use of robots in the workplace. Asimov’s laws of robotics, which state that a robot must not hurt a human, were violated by the 2021 incident. Moreover, a study published earlier this year found that there were 41 U.S. workers who were killed in robot-related workplace incidents over a 15-year period, with a large majority of these deaths occurring during maintenance on a robot.
Tesla and other companies have been pushing to automate more of their business operations in response to rising inflation and labor costs. Despite the potential for increasing danger, many employers are embracing robots in the workplace. For example, GXO Logistics is testing a humanoid robot that can lift boxes and place objects on conveyor belts.
While the introduction of robots on the job can decrease the risk of injury, large industrial robots can also pose a danger, especially if they are not designed to detect people nearby. Amazon is another employer with a high injury rate despite its embrace of automation. Reveal reported that the introduction of robots in Amazon warehouses actually made workers’ jobs more dangerous, with injury rates being higher at more-automated fulfillment centers.
It is clear that the use of robots in the workplace is a complex issue with both positive and negative implications for worker safety.
Update, Dec. 27, 2023: This article has been updated with a comment from Amazon and information on the Senate investigation.