Tesla faces questions from NHTSA after repeated incidents of crashing into emergency vehicles

U.S. vehicle safety regulators have asked Tesla Inc to produce information on how its advanced driver assistance system detects and responds to emergency vehicles parked on highways.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has sent a letter to the electric carmaker on Tuesday in the wake of repeated collision instances with emergency vehicles in the first responder scenes reported involving Tesla vehicles on Autopilot.

On Saturday, the latest incident was reported when a Tesla Model 3 hit a parked police vehicle in Orlando, which the driver claimed was using Autopilot, marking the twelfth incident.

NHTSA sent Tesla an 11-page letter with questions as part of its ongoing probe, which the agency launched on August 16 after identifying 11 crashes since January 2018, causing 17 injuries and one death.

No injuries or fatalities were reported from Saturday’s incident.

Tesla’s Autopilot system allows drivers to keep their hands off the wheel for an extended period which enables lane changing and automated parking in the software, although it does not make the cars fully autonomous.

Since July, Tesla has been selling the Full Self-Driving (FSD) package, its advanced driver assistant features for $10,000 or $199 a month.

Following the NHTSA probe, Senator Richard Blumenthal and Edward Markey wrote to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to open an investigation against the carmaker, saying it has misled consumers and endangered the public by advertising its drivers’ assistance systems as fully self-driving.

Later, Tesla chief Elon Musk tweeted that the newest iteration of the company’s experimental driver aid software, FSD Beta 9.2, was “actually not great.”

NHTSA has asked the carmaker to disclose the “date and mileage at which the ‘Full Self Driving’ (FSD) option was enabled” for all vehicles along with all consumer complaints, field reports, crash reports, and lawsuits, along with many other information about its use of method and technologies.

The agency asked Tesla to respond to the questions by October 22.

Picture Credit: Autoblog