The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has initiated an investigation of Tesla’s Autopilot system. The probe follows 11 crashes with parked first responder automobiles since 2018, which resulted in 17 accidents and one dying.
“Most incidents took place after dark and the crash scenes encountered included scene control measures such as first responder vehicle lights, flares, an illuminated arrow board, and road cones,” the NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) wrote in a doc detailing the investigation. “The involved subject vehicles were all confirmed to have been engaged in either Autopilot or Traffic Aware Cruise Control during the approach to the crashes.”
The ODI’s preliminary analysis facilities on Autopilot in Models Y, X, S and three from mannequin years 2014 to 2021. That covers round 765,000 Tesla electrical automobiles, as Bloomberg notes. The incidents in query came about between January 2018 and July of this yr, together with in Massachusetts, Michigan and Arizona. The ODI additionally cited three crashes in California.
The Autopilot system retains the car centered within the lane and maintains velocity when it is energetic in its Operational Design Domain (ODD). It’s not but a full self-driving system, nevertheless. Drivers nonetheless have principal accountability for Object and Event Detection and Response (OEDR) — figuring out and responding to obstacles, automobiles and “adverse maneuvers” by different drivers.
“The investigation will additionally assess the OEDR by vehicles when engaged in Autopilot mode, and ODD in which the Autopilot mode is functional. The investigation will also include examination of the contributing circumstances for the confirmed crashes” talked about within the doc in addition to comparable crashes, the ODI wrote.
The NHTSA investigated and cleared Tesla over the primary Autopilot-related dying in 2016. Since then, the company has opened dozens of different probes into incidents by which it believes Autopilot was concerned. In June, the NHTSA ordered automakers to report incidents involving semi- and totally autonomous driving programs inside 24 hours of studying about them.
Earlier this yr, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) urged the NHTSA to problem stricter laws for autonomous driving, citing Tesla in its letter. “Tesla recently released a beta version of its Level 2 Autopilot system, described as having full self-driving capability,” NTSB chair Robert Sumwalt wrote. “By releasing the system, Tesla is testing on public roads a extremely automated AV know-how however with restricted oversight or reporting necessities.”
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