Federal regulators have launched an investigation into Elon Musk’s Tesla cars after high-profile incidents involving the full self-driving function.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced its probe Tuesday after receiving dozens of reports of Tesla cars running red lights and driving on the wrong side of the road with some instances involving injuries from crashes.
The investigation focuses on full self-driving cars that still require a “fully attentive driver.” While the drivers are fully responsible for complying with traffic laws, some claimed the full self-driving technology didn’t warn them of its “intended behavior.”
There were 19 reports claiming a Tesla full self-driving car “failed to remain stopped for the duration of a red traffic signal, failed to stop fully, or failed to accurately detect and display the correct traffic signal state in the vehicle interface,” regulators said.
Six related crashes were reported, four of which resulted in at least one injury.
There were also 22 reports claiming a Tesla full self-driving car, “entered opposing lanes of travel during or following a turn, crossed double-yellow lane markings while proceeding straight, or attempted to turn onto a road in the wrong direction despite the presence of wrong-way road signs.”
Several reports also claimed these vehicles went through an intersection in a turn-only lane or made a turn at an intersection in a through lane.
The probe will also look at the behavior of the full self-driving technology when approaching railroad crossings, which comes after a recent NBC News investigation found the Tesla cars sometimes failed to stop at railroad crossings.
The Independent has reached out to Tesla for comment.
NHTSA’s probe covers 2,882,566 cars, essentially all Teslas equipped with full self-driving technology. The company is still testing a car that does not require driver intervention, something that Musk has been promising to roll out for years.
The new investigation follows a host of other investigations into the full self-driving feature on Teslas, which has been blamed for several injuries and deaths. Tesla has repeatedly said the system cannot drive itself and human drivers must be ready to intervene at all times.
Tesla is also under investigation by NHTSA for a “summon” technology that allows drivers to tell their cars to drive to their location to pick them up, a feature that has reportedly led to some fender benders in parking lots.
A probe into driver-assistance features in 2.4 million Teslas was opened last year after several crashes in fog and other low-visibility conditions, including one in which a pedestrian was killed.
Another investigation was launched by NHTSA in August looking into why Tesla apparently has not been reporting crashes promptly to the agency as required by its rules.
Musk is under pressure to show that the latest advances in its driver-assistance features have not only fixed such glitches but have made them so good that drivers don’t even need to look out the window anymore. He recently promised to put hundreds of thousands of such self-driving Tesla cars and Tesla Robotaxis on roads by the end of next year.
Tesla isn’t the only self-driving car company in hot water. California authorities recently pulled over a Waymo car without a human driver inside after it made an illegal U-turn.
With reporting from The Associated Press.
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