In the recent news, US safety regulators, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has launched an investigation into a fatal Tesla crash. The investigation launched by US safety regulators, which was opened in July, is the latest in a long string of inquiries by NHTSA’s Special Investigations program into crashes involving Tesla vehicles. This fatal Tesla crash, in which a pedestrian was killed, involved a 2018 Tesla Model 3 in California.
The US Safety Regulators Are Currently Investigating 36 Fatal Tesla Crash
The NHTSA’s special crash investigations (SCI) program concentrates on cases that are beneficial for studying special crash occurrences or outcomes from an engineering viewpoint. The agency presently has 45 open SCI cases involving advanced driver assistance systems or automated driving. Of those, 36 involve Tesla vehicles. Eleven of the fatal Tesla crash crashes resulted in 15 fatalities. Tesla’s advanced driver assistance system, known as Autopilot, has increasingly been scrutinized by the federal agency.
Last month, the US safety regulators “upgraded” their investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot after discovering new incidents of the EVs crashing into parked first-responder vehicles. The agency said in a notice that it was expanding its preliminary evaluation of Tesla Autopilot systems to an engineering analysis. This means that NHTSA will extend its existing crash analysis, evaluate additional datasets and perform vehicle evaluations.
The Authorities Will Examine Tesla Vehicle Systems for Safety Concerns
Moreover, the US safety regulators will also evaluate whether Autopilot and associated Tesla systems may exacerbate human factors or behavioral safety risks by undermining the effectiveness of the driver’s supervision, according to the agency. The escalation is a critical and required step before NHTSA can issue a recall. According to agency documents, an estimated 830,000 Tesla vehicles are involved in the probe. The US safety regulators official, Steven Cliff told the press on Wednesday that he wants to complete the Tesla Autopilot investigation “as quickly as we possibly can but I also want to get it right. There’s a lot of information that we need to comb through.”
Read more: Chinese EV Firm BYD Surpasses Tesla in Global Electric Vehicle Sales
