After almost a dozen instances of Tesla’s vehicles smashing into automobiles at the scenes of accidents involving emergency responders, US auto safety regulators started an inquiry into the company’s partly self-driving car technology.
On Friday, the National Transportation Safety Board opened an inquiry into Tesla’s Autopilot, which steers, brakes, and accelerates the vehicle on most laned roads.
Though the system can drive the car on its own in many situations, drivers must maintain their hands on the wheel in case Autopilot meets a situation that is too intricate for it to handle on its own.
The National Transportation Safety Board and NHTSA have examined Autopilot many times, notably after a collision in Florida in 2016 that killed a man who investigators said had too much faith in the system’s capabilities.
Safety watchdogs have chastised Tesla for misrepresenting Autopilot’s capabilities, while Tesla CEO Elon Musk has claimed that the technology is safer than human drivers.
A fatal collision in Texas using an Autopilot car in May brought to light the fact that drivers may fool Autopilot into believing someone is behind the wheel even when no one is there.
Tesla takes action following the crash: Tesla installs a cabin camera to monitor drivers who use Autopilot.
Tesla users have uploaded videos on YouTube of themselves abusing the technology by sitting in the rear seat while the car drives itself.
Tesla started shortly after the Texas incident that it was deploying cameras to monitor whether drivers were paying attention to the road while using Autopilot.
According to an Office of Defects Investigation document, NHTSA inspectors documented 11 incidents since January 2018 “in which Tesla models of various configurations have met first responder situations and subsequently hit one or more cars engaged with those scenes.”
All of the vehicles involved in the events were confirmed to have been in Autopilot or Traffic-Aware mode prior to the crashes. The majority of crashes happened after dark, and the incident sites were equipped with first responder vehicle lights, flares, an illuminated arrow board, and road cones.
The accidents happened on Tesla vehicles manufactured between 2014 and 2021. Model years are not assigned to Tesla automobiles, but federal agencies do.
