The United States automotive regulatory agency has opened a preliminary investigation into Tesla’s advanced driver assistance program, Autopilot, after 11 incidents of Tesla vehicles crashing into parked emergency vehicles were identified.
The US Government’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), through its Office of Defects Investigation (ODI), has opened an investigation into 11 identified crashes – which have resulted in 17 injuries and one fatality – since the beginning of 2018.
According to investigation documents published on the agency’s website over the weekend, the ODI had “identified eleven crashes in which Tesla models of various configurations have encountered first responder scenes and subsequently struck one or more vehicles involved with those scenes.”
NTSB Chair Jennifer L. Homendy said in a statement on Monday (US time) that it was critical the organisation “had insight into what these vehicles can, and cannot, do.”
According to Tesla, all its cars “come standard with advanced hardware capable of providing Autopilot features today, and full self-driving capabilities in the future”. Autopilot uses eight surround cameras providing 360-degrees of visibility around the car at up to 250-metres of range.
Additionally, twelve ultrasonic sensors complement the cameras, providing “detection of both hard and soft objects at nearly twice the distance of the prior system” – which, again, is a nice way of saying “both cars and people”.
However, despite Tesla’s insistence on its overall superiority and, in particular, the pre-eminence of its driver assist technology, the NHTSA’s ODI are currently aware of 11 instances, most of which took place after dark, in which a Tesla vehicle under Autopilot assistance crashed into “scene control measures such as first responder vehicle lights, flares, an illuminated arrow board, and road cones.”
The NHTSA’s ODI investigation documented that in each of the 11 cases, “either Autopilot or Traffic Aware Cruise Control” was enabled.
“NHTSA reminds the public that no commercially available motor vehicles today are capable of driving themselves,” the agency said in a statement. “Every available vehicle requires a human driver to be in control at all times, and all state laws hold human drivers responsible for operation of their vehicles.”
The ODI’s preliminary investigation will focus on Tesla’s Autopilot system in its Models Y, X, S, and 3, across Model Years 2014 to 2021.
“The investigation will assess the technologies and methods used to monitor, assist, and enforce the driver’s engagement with the dynamic driving task during Autopilot operation,” the investigation documents read.
“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 listed below and other similar crashes.”
This is not the first time that Tesla’s Autopilot features have fallen under the scrutiny of the NHTSA, after the agency in 2017 investigated an incident that resulted in a fatal crash in 2016 – though, at the time, Tesla was found to be at “no-fault” in the accident.
According to the Associated Press, who broke the story on Monday, crashes involving Tesla Autopilot number 25, in which 10 deaths were reported.
“We are glad to see NHTSA finally acknowledge our long-standing call to investigate Tesla for putting technology on the road that will be foreseeably misused in a way that is leading to crashes, injuries, and deaths,” said Jason Levine, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Auto Safety, an advocacy group.
“If anything, this probe needs to go far beyond crashes involving first responder vehicles because the danger is to all drivers, passengers, and pedestrians when Autopilot is engaged.”
Joshua S. Hill is a Melbourne-based journalist who has been writing about climate change, clean technology, and electric vehicles for over 15 years. He has been reporting on electric vehicles and clean technologies for Renew Economy and The Driven since 2012. His preferred mode of transport is his feet.