US federal auto safety regulators have launched another investigation into Tesla's fully self-driving technology after dozens of incidents in which its vehicles ran red lights or drove on the wrong side of the road, sometimes crashing into other vehicles and injuring people.
The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a statement on Tuesday that it had 58 reports of incidents in which Tesla vehicles violated traffic safety laws while operating in full self-driving mode. In reports to regulators, many Tesla drivers said the cars failed to warn them about the unexpected behavior.
The investigation covers 2,882,566 vehicles, mostly all Teslas, equipped with Full Self-Driving technology, or FSD, of which there are two types.
Level 2 driver assistance software, or Full Self-Driving (Supervised), requires drivers to pay full attention to the road. The company is still testing another version that doesn't require driver intervention, which the automaker's owner and CEO Elon Musk has promised to implement for years.
Sure, it can handle the grid-like streets of most cities, but can a self-driving car navigate the centuries-old, asymmetrical maze in downtown St. John's? Watch the video to find out.
The new investigation follows multiple other investigations into the FSD feature on Teslas, which has been blamed for several injuries and deaths. Tesla has repeatedly stated that the system cannot drive itself and human drivers must be prepared to intervene at any time.
Tesla is also under investigation by NHTSA for its “call” technology, which allows drivers to order their cars to come to their location and pick them up. This feature has reportedly resulted in some fender benders in parking lots.
An investigation into driver-assistance features in 2.4 million Tesla vehicles was launched last year after several crashes in fog and other low visibility conditions, including one that killed a pedestrian.
Another investigation was launched by NHTSA in August to look into why Tesla apparently did not promptly report crashes to the agency as required by its rules.
Musk is forced to demonstrate that recent advances in driver assistance features have not only eliminated such glitches, but have made them so good that good drivers no longer even need to look out the window.
He also recently promised to have hundreds of thousands of these Tesla self-driving cars and Tesla robotaxis on the road by the end of next year.
Tesla shares fell 1.4% on Thursday.
