The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) opened an investigation into Tesla on Thursday, reports the Associated Press. Though every preventable death is a tragedy, not every death should trigger a federal investigation and potential recall of overwhelmingly safe technology. The NHTSA's overzealous scrutiny of Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) feature is unwarranted and counterproductive.
The NHTSA lists a total of four crashes in its Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) report. Only one of the crashes involved an injury, which was unfortunately fatal. The November 2023 accident occurred when a Tesla Model Y using FSD collided with a Toyota 4Runner that had stopped to respond to a previous collision on Interstate 17 in Rimrock, Arizona. The accident killed a 71-year-old woman, per A.P.
