U.S. looking into effectiveness of Tesla Autopilot recall
Since the remedy went into effect, the company has reported 20 more crashes involving the system.
The U.S. government’s auto safety agency is investigating whether last year’s recall of Tesla’s Autopilot driving system did enough to make sure drivers pay attention to the road.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says in documents posted on its website Friday that Tesla has reported 20 more crashes involving Autopilot since the recall. The crashes and agency tests raised concerns about the effectiveness of the remedy. The recall involved more than 2 million vehicles, nearly all the vehicles that Tesla had sold at the time.
The agency pushed the company to do the recall after a two-year investigation into Autopilot’s driver monitoring system, which measures torque on the steering wheel from a driver’s hands. In the probe, the agency was looking at multiple cases in which Teslas on Autopilot ran into emergency vehicles parked on freeways.
The recall fix involves an online software update to increase warnings to drivers.
But the agency said in documents that it has found evidence of crashes after the fix, and that Tesla tried to address problems with additional software updates after the recall fix was sent out. The updates may not have worked.
“This investigation will consider why these updates were not part of the recall or otherwise determined to remedy a defect that poses an unreasonable safety risk,” the agency wrote.
A message was left early Friday seeking comment from Tesla.
NHTSA said that Tesla reported the 20 crashes in vehicles that had received the recall software fix. The agency has required Tesla and other automakers to report crashes involving partially and fully automated driving systems.
NHTSA said it will evaluate the recall, including the “prominence and scope” of Autopilot’s controls to address misuse, confusion and use in areas that the system is not designed to handle.
It also said that Tesla has stated that owners can decide whether they want to opt in to parts of the recall remedy, and that it allows drivers to reverse parts of it.
Safety advocates have long expressed concern that Autopilot, which can keep a vehicle in its lane and a distance from objects in front of it, was not designed to operate on roads other than limited access highways.
The investigation comes just one week after a Tesla that may have been operating on Autopilot hit and killed a motorcyclist near Seattle, raising questions about whether a recent recall went far enough to ensure Tesla drivers using Autopilot pay attention to the road.
After the April 19 crash in a suburban area about 15 miles northeast of the city, the driver of a 2022 Tesla Model S told a Washington State Patrol trooper that he was using Autopilot and looked at his cellphone while the Tesla was moving.
“The next thing he knew there was a bang and the vehicle lurched forward as it accelerated and collided with the motorcycle in front of him,” the trooper wrote in a probable-cause document.
The 56-year-old driver was arrested for investigation of vehicular homicide “based on the admitted inattention to driving, while on Autopilot mode, and the distraction of the cellphone while moving forward, putting trust in the machine to drive for him,” the affidavit said.
The motorcyclist, Jeffrey Nissen, 28, of Stanwood, Wash., was pronounced dead at the scene, authorities reported.
Authorities said they have not yet independently verified whether Autopilot was in use at the time of the crash.
On Thursday, NHTSA ended its investigation of Autopilot, citing the recall and the investigation of its effectiveness. The agency said it found evidence “that Tesla’s weak driver engagement system was not appropriate for Autopilot’s permissive operating capabilities.”
The system sends alerts to drivers if it fails to detect torque from hands on the steering wheel, a system that experts describe as ineffective. Although many newer Teslas have cameras that can watch the driver, they can’t see at night, and testing shows that Autopilot can still be used even if the cameras are covered.
The Associated Press reported shortly after the recall that experts said the fix relied on technology that may not work.
Michael Brooks, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Auto Safety, said NHTSA is looking into where Tesla allows Autopilot to be used.
The company doesn’t limit its use, even though it was designed to operate on limited access freeways. Tesla, he said, appears to rely on computers to decide whether Autopilot can operate rather than maps that show a vehicle’s location.
“When you hit that point where you’re in the area where Autopilot wasn’t designed to operate and the car knows it’s in that area, why is it still allowed to engage?” he asked.