Federal Investigation with Tesla Due to Violations in Reporting Autonomous Driving Incidents
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has opened a federal investigation with Tesla due to its delay in reporting incidents related to the autonomous driving systems in its vehicles, according to official documents released on Thursday, August 21.
The documents revealed that the agency's defect investigation office found "numerous incident reports" from Tesla related to incidents "that occurred months or more before the reporting dates" to the agency, violating federal requirements that mandate companies to report any incident within five days of becoming aware of it.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's interpretation, the delay in reporting is likely due to "a problem in collecting Tesla's data, which, according to Tesla, has now been fixed."
The agency's "audit inquiry" will focus on assessing Tesla's compliance with reporting requirements, the reasons for these delays, and their scope, as well as "the actions Tesla has taken to address them." The investigation will also expand to verify whether the company neglected to report any relevant prior collisions, and whether the submitted reports "included all required and available data."
This investigation comes amid increased scrutiny of the driver assistance systems promoted by Tesla, such as the basic "Autopilot" system and the "Full Self-Driving under Supervision" option (FSD), all of which require a driver ready to take control of the vehicle at any moment.
On the other hand, the site (TeslaDeaths.com), which specializes in tracking Tesla incidents based on news reports and official records, has recorded "at least 59 fatalities resulting from incidents in which the autonomous driving system or FSD was active."
It is noted that Tesla recently launched a self-driving taxi service with a driver ("Robotaxi") in Austin, Texas, and in the San Francisco Bay Area in California, but it has not yet started full passenger transport services without a driver, which would put it in direct competition with companies like Alphabet's "Waymo" and Baidu's "Apollo Go."
