Hands on the Wheel, Elon: NHTSA's Tesla Autopilot Investigation Is Moving 'Really Fast'

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recently told reporters that the agency is “working really fast” on its investigation into Tesla’s autopilot system. The federal agency has been probing a constantly growing number of Tesla accidents involving Elon Musk’s attempt at self-driving cars.

Reuters reports that the NHTSA has announced that it is actively investigating Tesla’s Autopilot system. The regulatory agency opened the probe in August 2021, and has recently confirmed that it is investing significant resources into the investigation. The NHTSA is focused on determining whether Tesla vehicles adequately ensure that drivers are paying attention while using the Autopilot driver assistance system.

A Tesla car in autopilot mode smashed into a parked police vehicle in California (Laguna Beach Police Department)

Tesla said in a statement Wednesday that the only way a 2018 fatal Model X accident could have occurred was if the driver, Walter Huang, was not paying attention. (KTVU via Associated Press)

In June of this year, the NHTSA upgraded its investigation into an engineering analysis of its defect probe into 830,000 Tesla vehicles with the Autopilot system, involving crashes with parked emergency vehicles. This move was a necessary step before the agency could demand a recall. The NHTSA is also reviewing whether Tesla’s alert strategy for ensuring driver attention is effective.

Acting head of the NHTSA, Ann Carlson, stated, “We’re investing a lot of resources. The resources require a lot of technical expertise, actually some legal novelty and so we’re moving as quickly as we can, but we also want to be careful and make sure we have all the information we need.” However, Carlson declined to commit to a particular timeframe on when the probe will be resolved.

The probe also includes an investigation into a tweet by Tesla CEO Elon Musk in December 2021, in which he suggested that drivers with more than 10,000 miles using Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) software system should be able to disable the “steering wheel nag,” an alert that instructs drivers to hold the wheel to confirm they are paying attention. Musk responded to the tweet by saying, “Agreed, update coming in Jan.” This tweet raised concerns from the NHTSA and was mentioned by Carlson in a conversation with reporters.

In 2020, the National Transportation Safety Board criticized Tesla’s “ineffective monitoring of driver engagement” after a 2018 fatal Autopilot crash and said NHTSA had provided “scant oversight.” This criticism led to the NHTSA starting the investigation in 2021, including Musk’s recent tweets.

The Tesla Autopilot is a semi-autonomous driving system, which includes lane-keeping assistance, adaptive cruise control, automatic emergency braking, and more, which help drivers navigate and drive on the road without fully engaging. However, it still requires the driver’s attention and monitoring of the road, which is where the NHTSA is focusing its investigation.

The NHTSA is also looking into two new special investigations into crashes involving Tesla vehicles where advanced driver assistance systems are suspected of having been in use. Since 2016, NHTSA has opened more than three dozen Tesla special crash investigations where advanced driver assistance systems such as Autopilot were suspected of being used, with 19 crash deaths reported.

In 2022 Breitbart News reported that the NHTSA’s investigations covered 200 crashes and 830,000 Tesla vehicles.

The NHTSA said this week that it is widening the scope of the investigation into the effectiveness of Tesla’s driver assistance system. The agency will now be reviewing information from 830,000 Tesla cars and 200 new cases of crashes involving Tesla cars utilizing the Autopilot function.

The NHTSA said that it is treating the investigation as an “Engineering Analysis,” which is necessary before possibly issuing a recall of cars fitted with the Autopilot feature. According to a press release, the NHTSA’s expanded probe will “explore the degree to which Autopilot and associated Tesla systems may exacerbate human factors or behavioral safety risks by undermining the effectiveness of the driver’s supervision.”

The agency has added six more crashes involving first-responder vehicles to its analysis of Tesla’s Autopilot function since launching the probe ten months ago. The agency said that it found that Tesla’s warning system only activated moments before colliding with another vehicle. The agency added that the “Automatic Emergency Braking” only activated in about half of crashes. “On average in these crashes, Autopilot aborted vehicle control less than one second prior to the first impact,” the agency’s press release stated.