President-elect Donald Trump's transition team is planning to end a car-crash reporting requirement opposed by Tesla, according to documents obtained by Reuters. Such a move would cripple the government's ability to investigate and regulate the safety of self-driving vehicles, but it would please Elon Musk, whose company has reported most of the crashes — more than 1,500 — to federal safety regulators in compliance with the rule.
Tesla took an early lead among automakers in developing advanced driver-assistance features, which help drivers with lane changes, driving speed and steering. But its point of pride, the Autopilot and "Full Self-Driving" systems, which are not fully autonomous, have led to multiple lawsuits and a DOJ criminal probe over charges that Tesla exaggerated its vehicles' self-driving capabilities, misled investors and put consumers at risk of injury or death.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has targeted Tesla with multiple investigations over safety violations, including three stemming from the data produced from crash reporting.
A Reuters analysis of the NHTSA crash data found that Tesla accounted for 40 out of 45 fatal crashes reported to NHTSA through Oct. 15.
Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor, told Reuters that Tesla collects more data than other companies and likely reports a "far greater proportion of their incidents” than other automakers. Tesla may be disproportionately represented in crash data, he said, simply because they have more vehicles with automated systems on the road.
While Reuters could not determine if Musk, who spent a quarter of a billion dollars electing Trump, was directly involved in the 100-day-strategy automative policy paper that included the provision, two sources familiar with Tesla executives' thinking told the outlet that the company despises the crash-notification requirement, believing that NHTSA uses the data to mislead customers over the safety of automated vehicles.
