The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating whether Tesla’s December 2023 recall of more than 2 million vehicles is appropriate to update autopilot functions after numerous crashes.
NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation is opening the investigation after identifying 20 crashes involving Tesla vehicles with updated software, the agency said in documents filed Friday.
After the software updates were implemented, “ODI identified concerns resulting from post-fix crash events and results from NHTSA preliminary testing of fixed vehicles,” the agency said in the filing.
The agency also concluded a nearly three-year investigation that analyzed 956 crashes involving Tesla vehicles through August 30, 2023. Nearly half of the crashes (467) could have been avoidable, ODI said, but happened because “Tesla’s weak driver engagement system didn’t work.” not suitable for Autopilot’s permissive operational capabilities.”
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In that investigation, the agency found at least 13 crashes “with one or more fatalities and many more with serious injuries, in which foreseeable misuse of the system by the driver clearly played a role,” the report said.
Last week, a Tesla driven by someone with Tesla’s Full Self-Driving beta feature reportedly struck and killed a motorcyclist in Washington state. This feature isn’t a full self-driving mode, but it does more than just autopilot – navigating turns and stopping at lights and signs – and still requires drivers to pay attention.
NHTSA: Tesla Autopilot System Has ‘Critical Safety Gap’
Although Teslas are often referred to as self-driving cars, they actually have driver assistance features that make driving easier, but not fully automatic. Autopilot involves the use of Tesla’s Traffic-Aware Cruise Control, which adjusts the speed of other traffic, and Autosteer, which helps keep the vehicle in its lane but requires drivers to keep their hands on the wheel.
But drivers may expect their Tesla to do too much, federal regulators say.
A “critical safety gap between drivers’ expectations of the operational capabilities of Tesla’s driver assistance system and the system’s actual capabilities … led to foreseeable misuse and avoidable crashes,” the agency said in its closed investigation report.
In those 467 crashes, ODI said attentive drivers should have been able to react or mitigate the crash in many cases. Other times, cars went off the road when Autosteer – Tesla’s practical steering assist feature – was “accidentally disabled by driver input,” or the features were used in “low traction conditions such as wet roads,” the agency said.
The new investigation will “evaluate the appropriateness of (the December 2023 recall), including the prominence and scope of the Autopilot controls to address misuse, mode confusion, or use in environments for which the system is not designed,” the agency said.
Which Tesla vehicles were recalled?
When the recall was announced in December, 2,031,220 vehicles were affected: the Model S 2012-2023, Model
In the December 2023 recall, Tesla noted: “In certain circumstances where the Autosteer feature is enabled and the driver has no personal responsibility for the operation of the vehicle and is unwilling to intervene if necessary, or does not notice when Autosteer is canceled or not engaged, there may be an increased risk of an accident.”
The ODI survey also includes newer models and the Tesla Cybertruck.
Models included in NHTSA study:
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2024 Tesla Cybertruck
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2017-2024 Tesla Model 3
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2021-2024 Tesla Model S
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2016-2024 Tesla Model X
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2020-2024 Tesla Model Y
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The new research comes as Tesla recently announced a first-quarter sales decline and layoffs in Austin and the Bay Area. However, CEO Elon Musk remained optimistic about the company’s self-driving technology and electric cars. And the company is expected to unveil its robotaxi on August 8.
Reuters reported in October 2022 that Tesla was under criminal investigation for its self-driving claims. Tesla said in October 2023 that the Justice Department had issued subpoenas related to its self-driving and autopilot technology.
Contributing: Emily DeLetter, James Powell, USA TODAY, and Reuters.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Tesla: Self-driving solution for 2 million cars investigated by NHTSA