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TL;DRFired Tesla manager Medrano alleges Houston’s FSD test fleet operated at a 38:1 driver-to-manager ratio (Tesla baseline: 15:1). He answered a crash call while asleep. HR told him to use Do Not Disturb mode. He was fired.
Javier Medrano, a former Tesla fleet operations manager, filed a federal lawsuit alleging the company turned its Houston Full Self-Driving test fleet into 24/7 “rolling hazards” by aggressively scaling operations without adequate safety oversight. Medrano was the sole manager overseeing 38 vehicle operators across three shifts, a ratio of 38:1 that the suit says violated Tesla’s own mandated 15:1 safety baseline. Other cities with similar test fleets had multiple safety leads per shift.
The operators were part of Tesla’s “Rodeo Team,” whose existence was first reported by Business Insider in 2024. These drivers deliberately got autonomous vehicles into dangerous situations and intervened only at the last possible moment, generating training data for FSD. Medrano took over as sole operational manager eight months after joining Tesla in 2023. The fleet grew from 15 to 38 operators under his watch, but he received no additional supervisory staff despite repeated requests.
