WASHINGTON — U.S. auto safety regulators said on Thursday they have opened 30 investigations into Tesla crashes that killed 10 since 2016, in which advanced driver assistance systems were suspected of being used.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has released a list detailing crashes being assessed by its Special Crash Investigations programs.
The agency had already confirmed some specific Tesla crash investigations, but had not previously released to Reuters full accounts of all investigated Tesla crashes in which Tesla’s Autopilot system was suspected of involvement.
Of the 30 Tesla crashes, the NHTSA has ruled out Tesla’s Autopilot in three and published reports on two of the crashes.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Reuters first requested a full list from the NHTSA more than a year ago under a public registry request. The list only includes the state and month in which the crashes occurred.
Earlier, NHTSA said it had opened 28 special crash investigations into Tesla crashes, 24 of which are pending. The spreadsheet shows a crash in February 2019 where Autopilot use was undetermined.
According to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the Autopilot, which performs some driving tasks, in at least three Tesla vehicles has been involved in fatal U.S. crashes since 2016. The NTSB has criticized Tesla’s lack of system safeguards for Autopilot, causing drivers to shake their hands. be able to keep them off the wheel for a longer period of time.
The spreadsheet shows that the NHTSA has opened eight Tesla crash investigations since March.
The issue has received new attention after a fiery crash in Texas on April 17 that killed two men in Texas, with police saying they believed no one was behind the wheel.
The National Transportation Safety Board said in May that tests suggested the vehicle’s automated steering system was “unavailable” on the road where the accident occurred.
On Wednesday, Senate Speaker Maria Cantwell cited Tesla’s crashes as the panel voted against continuing with regulations to accelerate the adoption of self-driving cars.
“It seems like every other week we hear about a new vehicle that crashed when it was on Autopilot,” Cantwell said.
Separately, NHTSA has not conducted any new tests after it withdrew its designation last month that some newer Tesla Model 3 and Model Y vehicles had four advanced safety features after the automaker said it was removing radar sensors to transition to a camera-based Autopilot. -system.
The agency said Thursday that after discussions with Tesla, it reinstated the lane departure warning after Tesla confirmed the technology was untouched.
NHTSA said in a statement it has “not yet completed the list of model year 2022 vehicles” for testing.
The spreadsheet also notes that the NHTSA has opened six other investigations into six other accidents involving driver assistance systems, including two involving Cadillac vehicles that did not involve any injuries, a 2012 Lexus RX450H and a 2017 Navya Arma shuttle bus that had no injuries. .
The remaining two were 2017 Volvo XC90 vehicles, including an Uber Technologies self-driving test vehicle that hit and killed a woman in Arizona in 2018. Uber had made a series of development decisions that contributed to the cause of the crash and deactivated its automatic emergency braking systems. inside the Volvo XC90 vehicle, security researchers found.