US Authorities to Soon Address Tesla Autopilot Probe Findings, Source Says

According to Reuters, the National Highway Traffic Safety Agency (NHTSA) will conclude its two-year investigation into Tesla Autopilot and may soon make a statement to the public.

While she opted not to share potential solutions for the Tesla inquiry, she did say, “hopefully you’ll hear something relatively soon.” A request for comment from Tesla was not immediately complied with.

After discovering more than a dozen accidents involving Tesla vehicles colliding with stopped emergency vehicles, the government launched an investigation into the effectiveness of Autopilot. Also, it is looking at how well Tesla cars ensure that users of their driver assistance systems are paying attention.

NHTSA escalated the investigation into 830,000 Tesla vehicles it had initially launched in August 2021 to an engineering examination in June 2022. This was a necessary step before it might eventually demand a recall. NHTSA asked Tesla for revised responses and recent data last month as part of the investigation.

Enhanced Autopilot can let drivers change lanes on highways. Autopilot is designed to let cars steer, accelerate, and brake automatically inside their lane.

Meanwhile, the NHTSA has started more than 30 Tesla special collision investigations since 2016, with 23 crash fatalities documented to date, in circumstances when driving systems like Autopilot were suspected of being engaged.

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Focus on Alert System in NHTSA Probe

With so many collisions being investigated, Carlson remarked that the Autopilot probe is “is complicated” There are large numbers, and we are attempting to address them, Carlson stated.

The effectiveness of Tesla’s alert method, which aims to demand drivers’ attention, has already been questioned, according to the NHTSA.

According to the EPA, nine out of the 11 vehicles involved in previous collisions in 2022 did not display any driver engagement or visual or chime alerts until just before an accident, and four did not display any visual or chime alerts at all during the final Autopilot use cycle.

In 2017, the NHTSA ended its earlier investigation of Autopilot without taking any further action. Tesla’s lack of system safeguards for Autopilot and NHTSA’s failure to certify the safety of Autopilot have drawn criticism from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

NHTSA should require automakers to include system safeguards that restrict the use of automated vehicle control systems to those circumstances for which they were intended, according to NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy.

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Source: Reuters