Tesla Autopilot under federal investigation for crashes with emergency vehicles

Tesla Autopilot under federal investigation for crashes with emergency vehicles

Tesla's Autopilot system is under federal investigation. On Monday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced it is formally looking into the safety of Tesla's Autopilot Level 2 driver-assistance functions. In particular, federal investigators say this new probe will look into Tesla crashes with parked emergency vehicles. The government agency is aware of at least 11 crashes or fires, resulting in 17 injuries, as well as one fatality. Some 765,000 cars from Tesla, including the Model Y, 3,S and X, are covered by this new investigation.

According to an Office of Defects Investigation document, NHTSA describes the core problem as "subject vehicle crashes with in-road or roadside first responders." Tesla vehicles have "encountered first responder scenes and subsequently struck one or more vehicles involved with those scenes," the preliminary report said. "The involved subject vehicles were all confirmed to have been engaged in either Autopilot or Traffic Aware Cruise Control during the approach to the crashes." The reported crashes took place between 2014 and 2021, with four of them occuring this year.

NHTSA did not immediately return Roadshow's request for additional comment. Tesla does not operate a public relations department to field requests for comment.

NHTSA and the National Traffic Safety Board have for years investigated various Tesla crashes involving the company's driver-assistance technology. The system is a Level 2 technology on the SAE's scale of autonomy, and does not provide any sort of autonomous driving technology. The National Transportation Safety Board last year spoke up about a lack of accountability for Tesla, but also regulators, including NHTSA, in the wake of high-profile fatal crashes in which drivers were apparently not in control. It also called on NHTSA to implement more regulations surrounding driver-assistance technology and self-driving cars in the wake of Tesla's "Full Self-Driving" beta.

This past June, NHTSA took its strictest stance yet on these new technologies as it mandated crash reports for self-driving cars and driver-assist systems. If any vehicle equipped with one of these types of technologies is involved in a crash, the agency will require a report from the automaker within 24 hours, plus updates with additional information over the following days.

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NHTSA Upgrades Tesla Autopilot Investigation, One Step Closer to Recall

NHTSA Upgrades Tesla Autopilot Investigation, One Step Closer to Recall

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration last August opened an investigation into Tesla's Autopilot driver-assist system, focused on crashes involving emergency vehicles when Autopilot was active. Now, it's upgrading that investigation, which brings the probe one step closer to becoming a possible recall.

NHTSA this week announced that it was upgrading its inquiry into approximately 830,000 Tesla vehicles equipped with Autopilot. In related documents published by NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation, the government said it was taking this step "to extend the existing crash analysis, evaluate additional data sets, perform vehicle evaluations, and explore the degree to which Autopilot and associated Tesla systems may exacerbate human factors or behavioral safety risks by undermining the effectiveness of the driver's supervision."

The engineering analysis also brings in data from six additional incidents between November 2020 and January 2022, in addition to the 10 already under investigation. During this probe, NHTSA has reviewed more than 100 Tesla crashes involving both Autopilot and the automaker's Full Self Driving beta software. NHTSA also asked a dozen other automakers to submit data from their own SAE Level 2 systems.

From the data it's collected thus far, NHTSA noted in its investigation document that forward collision warnings activated "in the majority of incidents" just before impact, with automatic emergency braking engaging in roughly half of those collisions. NHTSA also noted that "Autopilot aborted vehicle control less than one second prior to the first impact" on average.

This brings NHTSA one step closer to the possibility of compelling Tesla to recall its vehicles, which include variants of the Model 3, Model S, Model X and Model Y sold between the 2014 and 2022 model years. Tesla could also initiate a voluntary recall if it so chose. The automaker does not operate a public relations team and thus could not be reached for comment.

Tesla is no stranger to government scrutiny outside this investigation. In early June, NHTSA asked Tesla to deliver data in regard to multiple reports of "phantom braking," where the vehicle will engage its brakes for seemingly no reason. Autopilot has also landed on the Federal Trade Commission's radar, with Reuters reporting that FTC Chair Lina Khan would neither confirm nor deny its own separate probe into Autopilot's efficacy, which could legally compel the automaker to change how it describes Autopilot's functionality to consumers.

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