The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) multiyear investigation into the safety of Tesla’s driver assistance systems is coming to an end.
Reuters’ David Shepardson The latest developments were first reported Thursday, citing Acting NHTSA Administrator Ann Carlson. CNBC confirmed the report to the federal vehicle safety regulator.
An NHTSA spokesman declined to go into further detail, but told CNBC in an email that “we confirmed these comments to Reuters” and that “NHTSA’s investigation into Tesla remains open and the agency generally does not comment on public investigations.” Comment.”
In 2021, the agency launched a safety investigation into Tesla’s driver assistance system (currently sold in the U.S. as the Autopilot, Full Self-Driving and FSD Beta options) after the agency uncovered a series of accidents in which Teslas were driving The officer is believed to have used the company’s driver assistance system and crashed into the stationary vehicle of first responders.
Despite the name, none of Tesla’s driver assistance features make their cars self-driving.Tesla cars can’t function like those robo-taxis that operate General Motorsowned cruise ship or letterWaymo. Instead, Tesla vehicles require a human driver to drive, ready to steer or brake. Tesla’s standard Autopilot and Advanced Full Self-Driving systems only control braking, steering and acceleration in limited situations.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who also owns and operates the social network X (formerly known as Twitter), has often hinted that Tesla vehicles are self-driving. For example, on July 23, a former Tesla employee who led the company’s artificial intelligence software engineering posted about ChatGPT on social networks. When he first showed the generative artificial intelligence tool to his parents, they What an impression they made. musk responds: “Tesla FSD is the same. I forgot that most people on the planet don’t know that cars can drive themselves.”
In its user manual, tesla Tell drivers using Autopilot or FSD: “Always keep your hands on the steering wheel and be aware of road conditions, surrounding traffic, and other road users (such as pedestrians and cyclists). Always be ready to take immediate action. Follow these Instructions may result in damage, serious injury or death.”
The company’s cars are equipped with a driver monitoring system that uses in-car cameras and sensors on the steering wheel to detect whether the driver is paying enough attention to the road and driving tasks. The system will “remind” the driver to pay attention and keep their hands on the wheel through a chime and a message on the car’s touchscreen. But it’s not clear that’s a powerful enough system to enable safe use of Tesla’s driver-assistance features.
Tesla has previously voluntarily recalled its cars over other issues with Autopilot and FSD Beta, promising over-the-air software updates to fix them. But in July, the agency asked Elon Musk’s automaker to send broader data on the performance of its driver assistance systems for evaluation as part of its Autopilot safety investigation.
NHTSA regularly releases data on U.S. crashes involving advanced driver assistance systems such as Tesla Autopilot, Full Self-Driving, or FSD Beta, known as “Level 2” according to SAE International’s industry standards.
The latest data general general order From Aug. 1, 2019, to mid-July of this year, at least 26 accidents involving Tesla vehicles equipped with the Level 2 system resulted in fatalities, the accident report said. In 23 of the crashes, Tesla’s driver-assistance features were activated within 30 seconds of the crash, the agency reported. In three incidents, it was unclear whether the features were used.
ford is the only automaker to report a fatal crash involving a vehicle equipped with a Level 2 driver assistance system. According to the NHTSA SGO report, it is unclear whether the system was activated before the accident.
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
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