US launches Tesla investigation after more accidents involving full self-driving feature
US federal auto safety regulators have launched another investigation into Tesla’s full self-driving technology after dozens of incidents in which its vehicles ran red lights or drove on the wrong side of the road, sometimes colliding with other vehicles and injuring people.
The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a filing on Tuesday that it had reports of 58 incidents of Tesla vehicles violating traffic safety laws while operating in full self-driving mode. In reports to regulators, several Tesla drivers said the cars gave them no warning about unexpected behavior.
The investigation involves 2,882,566 vehicles, essentially all Teslas equipped with full self-driving technology, or FSD, which comes in two types.
Level 2 driver-assistance software, or “full self-driving (supervised),” requires drivers to pay full attention to the road. The company is still testing a different version that doesn’t require driver intervention, something the automaker’s owner and CEO Elon Musk has been promising to introduce for years.
Sure it can handle the grid-like streets of most cities, but can a self-driving car navigate the centuries-old, labyrinthine maze of downtown St. John’s? Watch the video to find out.
The new investigation follows several other investigations into the FSD feature on Teslas, which have been blamed for numerous injuries and deaths. Tesla has repeatedly said that the system cannot drive itself and that human drivers must be ready to intervene at all times.
Tesla is also being investigated by NHTSA for its “summon” technology, which allows drivers to drive their cars to their location and ask them to pick them up, a feature that has reportedly led to some fender benders in parking lots.
The investigation into driver-assistance features in 2.4 million Teslas was launched last year after several crashes in fog and other low-visibility conditions, including the death of a pedestrian.
Another investigation was launched by NHTSA in August to look into why Tesla was apparently not reporting accidents to the agency according to its rules.
Musk is under pressure to show that the latest advances in its driver-assistance features have not only fixed such glitches, but made them so good that good drivers no longer even need to look out the window.
He also recently promised to put thousands of such self-driving Tesla cars and Tesla robotaxis on the roads by the end of next year.
Tesla shares fell 1.4 percent on Thursday.
