Two US senators have called on the country’s auto safety regulator to investigate Tesla’s self-published safety data for its “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) system, following allegations that the electric vehicle maker is exaggerating how safe the software actually is. According to a report by news agency Reuters, Senators Edward Markey and Richard Blumenthal sent a formal letter to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
Senators Criticize Tesla's Safety Claims
Both Senators blasted Tesla’s safety claims as “weak and misleading,” warning that the company's data practices have created “an urgent safety problem.” The senators have given NHTSA a deadline of July 7 to answer a series of questions, including whether the agency has ever independently evaluated Tesla’s FSD safety claims or demanded the raw crash data behind them.
Call for Tighter Reporting Rules
Furthermore, the lawmakers are urging NHTSA to tighten reporting rules for all companies deploying advanced driver-assistance systems, arguing that under current guidelines, the agency has no concrete way to verify whether “public safety claims bear any relationship to reality.”
What Are the Claims and What Research Has Found
The political pushback follows a Reuters report revealing that Tesla CEO Elon Musk and other top executives have frequently promoted that FSD technology makes its vehicles up to 10 times safer than human drivers. However, independent traffic researchers interviewed during the investigation stated that Tesla heavily skews the math to make its tech look better:
- The research has found that Tesla allegedly calculates its FSD crash rate using only severe accidents that are violent enough to deploy airbags, and compares this to the overall US crash rate for all vehicles, which includes far minor accidents like fender-benders.
- Secondly, Tesla evaluates its fleet against the average American vehicle, which is significantly older. This creates a massive distortion because newer cars automatically benefit from decades of modern safety engineering.
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