Federal Regulators Probe Tesla Autopilot and Self-Driving Safety Record
Federal regulators investigate Tesla's Level 2 driving systems after years of crash reports and safety concerns. The scrutiny leads to massive recalls affecting hundreds of thousands of vehicles.
Federal regulators investigate Tesla's Autopilot and Full Self-Driving systems due to ongoing safety concerns and crash reports dating back to 2016. These Level 2 semi-autonomous features rely on a network of cameras to monitor the vehicle's surroundings, but they require a fully attentive human driver at all times to operate safely.
Autopilot comes standard on all Tesla vehicles and offers basic adaptive cruise control and lane-keeping assistance. Full Self-Driving represents a more advanced, paid upgrade that attempts to navigate to a set destination, change lanes, handle intersections, and recognize traffic lights without human intervention.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) digs deep into these software programs as crashes and fatalities mount. This intense scrutiny ultimately results in high-profile recalls, including a major 2023 action that forces Tesla to update software on more than 300,000 vehicles to address dangerous driver behavior and system limitations.