Elon Musk’s Tesla would never get special treatment by the US government, right?
This week, Ars Technica reports, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration told the EV automaker that it would get another five weeks to comply with an order to fork over data for a probe into the safety of its self-driving technology.
The investigation, launched last October, covers nearly three million Tesla vehicles installed with the automaker’s misleadingly named “Full Self-Driving” mode — which is in reality only partially self-driving — after receiving nearly 60 reports of the software violating traffic laws. Fourteen of these incidents involved crashes, totaling 23 injuries. In six of the crashes, the driving software “approached an intersection with a red traffic signal, continued to travel into the intersection against the red light and was subsequently involved in a crash with other motor vehicles in the intersection,” according to an NHTSA complaint.
The original deadline for providing data related to these incidents was set at January 19, with potential penalties up to $27,874 per day of being late, for a maximum of $139.4 million. But in part because the winter holidays cut into that time a little bit — and with Tesla being inundated with other investigation’s requests into its self-driving tech’s safety record — the automaker asked to extend the deadline. Evidently, its pleas fell on sympathetic ears: it now has until February 23 to make good.
And to be fair to the Musk outfit, it’s being asked to provide a lot of information. Per Ars, the NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation informed the automaker on December 3 that it would need a list of every Tesla produced sold, or leased, in the US, whether those cars had FSD — plus cumulative data showing how many US Teslas have FSD and how often it’s used, along with documents like customer complaints, incident reports, and lawsuits related to FSD ignoring traffic laws.
Yet, on the other hand, it’s a questionable amount of leeway to be giving a company that the NHTSA has already investigated for repeatedly failing to report crashes on time. It should also be concerning that Tesla has a shady history when it comes to sharing crash data and working with regulatory deadlines. It’s long heavily censored information about crashes involving Autopilot, Full Self-Driving, and its robotaxis, to the point of rendering the reports virtually useless. The redactions, which are justified as protecting “confidential business information,” include the removal of basic details like crash narrative and when the date the incident occurred. At times, the NHTSA has even redacted crash information at Tesla’s request.
In any case, it’ll add to Tesla’s already pretty full plate. It’s already facing another ongoing NHTSA probe into the troubling phenomenon of FSD driving straight into the path of oncoming trains, and it’s separately being investigated for a horrific crash in which video footage shows FSD’s camera blinded by sunlight before mowing down and killing an elderly pedestrian.
All the while, it’s fighting the outcome of the lawsuit that ordered the automaker to pay $329 million in damages after a jury found it partially guilty for the death of a woman who was killed by a car running Autopilot. Perhaps a ton of paperwork is a light consequence to endure when you deploy unfinished and unsafe “self-driving” tech across millions of cars.
More on Tesla: Tesla Fan Profusely Praises FSD For Veering His Car off the Side of the Highway
The post Government Tells Tesla That This Is Definitely the Last Time It Can Blow Off Deadline to Turn In Data On Why FSD Is Constantly Ignoring Traffic Laws appeared first on Futurism.
