Tesla is under NHTSA probe for not properly reporting crashes involving Autopilot and FSD

NHTSA announced that it has launched an investigation into Tesla for not correctly reporting crashes involving its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving systems.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the road safety regulator in the US, already has several open investigations into Tesla, most of which are related to Tesla’s advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS): Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD).

Now, it is opening a new investigation related to inconsistencies in how Tesla reports crashes involving its ADAS systems.

Due to the Standing General Order 2021-01 (the “SGO”), automakers are required to report to NHTSA crashes involving their autonomous driving and advanced driver assistance systems within five days of being notified of them.

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When it comes to Tesla, it generally receives notification within minutes of a crash, as it has an automated collision snapshot that is sent to its mothership server following an accident.

Now, NHTSA claims that Tesla has sometimes waited months to report crashes involving Autopilot and Full Self-Driving.

They wrote in their notice that they opened a new probe into Tesla:

The Office of Defects Investigation (“ODI”) has identified numerous incident reports submitted by Tesla, Inc. (“Tesla”) in response to Standing General Order 2021-01 (the “SGO”), in which the reported crashes occurred several months or more before the dates of the reports. The majority of these reports involved crashes in which the Standing General Order in place at the time required a report to be submitted within one or five days of Tesla receiving notice of the crash. When the reports were submitted, Tesla submitted them in one of two ways. Many of the reports were submitted as part of a single batch, while others were submitted on a rolling basis.

Tesla told NHTSA that this was due to an “error” in their systems, and they claim to have fixed it, but the agency wants to investigate further:

Preliminary engagement between ODI and Tesla on the issue indicates that the timing of the reports was due to an issue with Tesla’s data collection, which, according to Tesla, has now been fixed. NHTSA is opening this Audit Query, a standard process for reviewing compliance with legal requirements, to evaluate the cause of the potential delays in reporting, the scope of any such delays, and the mitigations that Tesla has developed to address them. As part of this review, NHTSA will assess whether any reports of prior incidents remain outstanding and whether the reports that were submitted include all of the required and available data.

It’s not surprising to see the regulator being suspicious about Tesla’s excuse, following our report that Tesla lied and misled police and plaintiffs to hide its Autopilot crash data in a recent wrongful death case that the automaker lost in trial.

Tesla leads level 2 ADAS system crash data reporting by a mile (ADAS level 2 on the left and ADS level 3-5 on the right):

Tesla only appears on the chart for the level 2 driver assistance system and not on the crash reporting for the automated system, since, despite what its CEO and some shareholders claim, Tesla doesn’t have any system deployed in the US that qualifies as fully automated.

However, when it comes to level 2 ADAS crash reporting, Tesla leads with over 2,300 crashes, followed by GM, which reports 55 crashes with its SuperCruise system.

It’s not the first time that Tesla has had issues with NHTSA’s crash reporting. We previously reported that Tesla abuses NHTSA’s confidential policies to have most of the data related to the crashes redacted, and the automaker claimed that it would ‘suffer financial harm’ if its self-driving crash data became public.

Electrek’s Take

It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that Tesla tries to weasle its way out of reporting crash data related to its automated driving efforts.

At this point, it’s basically its modus operandi.

Yet, we are supposed to trust the company to deploy safe systems that automate driving?

Tesla has proven extremely opaque and untrustworthy in its safety reporting regarding Autopilot and Full Self-Driving. I think that’s a fair statement backed by facts.

That’s not what you want from a company deploying products that are potentially dangerous to road uses.