While Tesla AI Day took place on August 19, the leader in autonomous vehicles is seeing one of its technologies at the heart of a federal investigation. Indeed, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has launched its investigation into Tesla’s semi-autonomous system.

This is not the first time that the Tesla-designed semi-autonomous system called “Autopilot” has been at the center of turmoil. In 2017, US authorities had cleared the tool that was suspected to be the culprit in the death of a driver of the carmaker’s Model S. The car had collided with a heavy truck that cut him off while Autopilot was engaged.

Since then, there have been 11 accidents involving Tesla and first responders, police vehicles or fire trucks. The oldest dating back to 2018 and the most recent ones to this year when four such events occurred. The latest in San Diego on July 10. On February 27, in Texas, an emergency vehicle collided with a Tesla with Autopilot on.

4 accidents in the first part of the year 2021, the NHTSA considers the number far too important and the situation far too recurrent not to react and launch its investigation.

Far from Tesla Bashing, the will to highlight the similarities between these accidents and detect the flaws.

The federal agency has expressed itself on these 11 accidents that have overwhelming similarities:

“Most of the incidents occurred after dark, and the accident scenes we uncovered included scene control measures, with lights, illuminated beacons, signs with flashing arrows and traffic cones. The vehicles involved all had Autopilot or adaptive cruise control engaged as they approached the crashes…NHTSA is opening a preliminary investigation into driver assistance systems (in this case Autopilot) and the techniques in place to monitor, assist and enforce driver engagement while in use.”

The NHTSA announced that it would be looking at the entire Tesla model lineup that operates Autopilot. Thus, the Model S, Model X, Model 3 and Model Y since 2014 for the oldest models will all be studied. On the market today, this represents more than 760,000 vehicles of the manufacturer.

The federal agency tells the public that “no commercially available motor vehicle is currently capable of driving itself without at least partial human intervention. Note that Tesla had already decided to ban the use of radar to operate Autopilot and use only cameras in order to avoid these accidents …

Translated from Le système semi-autonome Autopilot de Tesla au centre d’un enquête fédérale suite à de multiples accidents