Elon Musk Tweet Leads to Investigation of Tesla

Stop me if you've heard this before -- Elon Musk tweeted something that has him and/or one of his companies in trouble with regulators.

From CNN: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration confirmed Monday that it is in contact with Tesla about Musk’s tweet in which he “agreed” that Tesla drivers should be allowed to disable the alert reminding them to keep their hands on the steering wheel while in “Full Self Driving” mode, which is a driver assist system in an early “beta” version that does not fully drive the car itself.

On December 31, Musk  replied to a  tweet by @WholeMarsBlog that said “users with more than 10,000 miles on FSD Beta should be given the option to turn off the steering wheel nag.”

“Agreed, update coming in Jan,” Musk replied.

NHTSA says the issue falls under the agency’s  existing investigation into the performance of Tesla’s driver assist systems.

“The investigation opening was motivated by an accumulation of crashes in which Tesla vehicles, operating with Autopilot engaged, struck stationary in-road or roadside first responder vehicles tending to pre-existing collision scenes,” reads the summary of the investigation which opened in June.

The federal inquiry into the tweet was first reported by the Associated Press.

So to recap: Tesla sycophant @WholeMarsBlog suggested that the FSD system lose one of its safety backups -- a system that uses pressure sensors in the steering wheel to make sure a driver is ready to take over if need be -- if the user had accumulated 10,000 miles of using the system. Musk seemed to agree.

Allow me to editorialize further: From a safety perspective, that's not great!

Once again, shouting this from the rooftops: THERE ARE NO SELF-DRIVING CARS FOR SALE TODAY.

I'm not a Luddite or necessarily anti-autonomous driving, but it seems like an unsafe idea to pull back on safety systems when it comes to these semi-autonomous driving systems. Especially when NHTSA is investigating how well these systems work.

Meanwhile, Jalopnik reports that this news broke on the same day that Tesla announced it would be more lenient when it comes to suspending users who are Full-Self Driving Beta testers. In the past, Tesla would boot drivers who weren't attentive enough for six months, now it will just be two weeks. Drivers get repeated warnings via the safety systems before they get the boot. Tesla also opened the program up to all drivers in November -- previously, they had to pass a safety test.

In summary, Tesla seems to be reducing safety backups for its system as it comes under investigation -- and as crashes mount. Insider reports over 750 incidents of unplanned hard braking, as one example.

Meanwhile, a Tesla stopped unexpectedly on San Francisco's Bay Bridge and caused an eight-car pileup that injured a child. Video at the link.

Maybe, just maybe, and hear me out here, we should hit the brakes (pun fully intended) on having customers be beta testers while also reducing safety backups? For the safety of all road users?

My apologies for editorializing a news piece more than I normally do, but it's so tiring to see Musk be so careless regarding the safety not only of Tesla drivers and passengers but the rest of us on the road.

[Image: Tesla]

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