Tesla is under investigation by the NHTSA due to 30 crashes that happened while the company’s autopilot mode was turned on.
Autopilot systems seem to be the future, but in all honesty, they are still far from perfect. Over the past few years, several vehicle crashes have been reported in which the drivers were suspected to be using the advanced autopilot functionality.
In the wake of recent events, the U.S. auto safety regulatory body, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or NHTSA, has opened investigations into 30 Tesla crashes that had Autopilot involved in some way or another.
The NHTSA published a database of accidents that are currently being investigated by its Special Crash Investigations program. A total of 10 lives have been lost in these 30 cases since 2016, the most recent one being the April 17 Texas crash followed by a fire that turned out fatal for two men. Police said neither of them was sitting in the driver’s seat when the accident occurred, and the car was running on Autopilot.
The shared data included the state and month in which the accident occurred but did not provide thorough details regarding the crash reports themselves. However, we know that NHTSA has opened investigations in at least 8 Tesla crashes since March.
Worth mentioning, all these cases were initially presumed to be a direct consequence of Tesla’s Autopilot, but that’s not the case. Investigations revealed that three out of the 30 crashes didn’t involve the advanced driver assistance system at all—still, that’s 27 that did.
Furthermore, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) pointed out that the Autopilot feature was indeed involved in three fatal crashes. The NTSB also investigates Tesla’s inability to build appropriate safeguards for Autopilot, which could also be operated for long durations without the driver touching the steering wheel.
At this point, it might be argued that the company and especially its CEO Elon Musk bragged way too much about its Autopilot, to the extent that customers now misjudge its capabilities—even calling it ‘Autopilot’ when it’s clearly not was already deceiving. But despite being the most prominently featured in the media, the Palo Alto firm is not the only auto manufacturer under the scanner. The document showed six other investigations, including two Cadillacs, a 2012 Lexus RX450H, and a 2017 Navya Arma. The other two involved are the 2017 Volvo XC90, one of which was an Uber test vehicle that killed a pedestrian in 2018.
In the not-so-distant future, we expect autonomous driving technology to improve significantly, eventually resulting in safer roads with zero crashes, but sadly we still ain’t there.
