The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, is looking into problems with Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” systems.
TakeAway Points:
- The NHTSA, a federal vehicle safety agency in the United States, has launched a “Full Self-Driving” safety investigation against Tesla.
- The investigation will determine whether using Tesla’s FSD systems in low-visibility situations—such as fog, bright sunlight, and others—is safe.
- The investigation looks into a number of Tesla crashes in which the driver used FSD within thirty seconds of the accident, including one in which the driver struck a pedestrian fatally.
Tesla faces NHTSA investigation
Tesla faces a new investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, concerning issues with its “Full Self-Driving” systems and whether they are safe to use in fog, glaring sun, or other “reduced roadway visibility conditions.”
According to the report, the probe follows an incident in which a Tesla driver who had been using FSD struck and killed a pedestrian and other FSD-involved collisions during reduced roadway visibility conditions.
Records posted to the NHTSA website on Friday morning said the purpose of the new probe would be to assess:
“The ability of FSD’s engineering controls to detect and respond appropriately to reduced roadway visibility conditions; whether any other similar FSD crashes have occurred in reduced roadway visibility conditions and, if so, the contributing circumstances for those crashes,” among other things.
The agency will also investigate Tesla’s over-the-air software updates for its FSD systems, which are now branded as “Full Self-Driving (Supervised)” in order to learn more about the “timing, purpose, and capabilities of any such updates, as well as Tesla’s assessment of their safety implications.”
Preliminary evaluation
The “preliminary evaluation” by the NHTSA pertains to a vehicle population of around 2.4 million Tesla EVs on U.S. roads, including Model S and X vehicles produced from 2016 to 2024, Model 3 vehicles produced from 2017 to 2024, Model Y vehicles produced from 2020 to 2024, and Cybertruck vehicles produced this year and last, which give drivers the option to use Tesla’s FSD.
The report states that FSD is Tesla’s premium driver assistance option that is available for purchase. The company currently refers to it as a “partial driving automation system.” However, Tesla previously provided a month-long free trial to all drivers in the United States.
The U.S. federal vehicle safety regulator tracks collisions involving the use of automakers’ advanced driver assistance systems, like Tesla’s Autopilot or FSD. As of Oct. 1, 2024, the NHTSA had tracked 1,399 incidents in which Tesla’s driver assistance systems were engaged within 30 seconds of the collision, and 31 of those had resulted in fatalities.
Meanwhile, the company recently held a marketing event in which CEO Elon Musk said Tesla expects to have “unsupervised FSD” up and running in Texas and California next year in the company’s Model 3 and Model Y electric vehicles.
Musk has promised driverless vehicles for years. But Tesla has not yet produced or shown a vehicle that is safe to use on public roads without a human at the wheel, ready to steer or brake at any time.
