Burnt red lights at the traffic lights and journeys in wrong lanes: these are the two most frequent reports among the over 50 sent to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)which led the American road safety authority to open an investigation against the software Full-Self Driving of cars Tesla.
It is not the first investigation: already in October 2024 the NHTSA had opened another one after receiving reports of Teslas having had accidents in poor visibility conditions. A third investigation dates back to April 2024, yet another is still ongoing.
NHTSA contro Tesla FSD v14
This investigation specifically concerns the latest version of Tesla’s autonomous driving software (the FSD v14), which is also based on the huge amount of data collected by Tesla during the testing phase of its products robotaxicurrently underway in Texas.
In particular, 18 reports concern cars Teslas running red lightsanother 6 are for failure to warn of an accident by the manufacturer (mandatory in the case of autonomous or semi-autonomous cars). Another 18 reports concern Teslas that have changed lanes after a turn, cut a double continuous stripe or tried to enter against traffic on some streets.
In most of these cases the car would have given the driver little or no time to notice what the software was doing and, consequently, to remedy the danger.
What happens now
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s investigation into Tesla for Full-Self Driving v14 has just begun (dated October 7) and is still in a preliminary phasebut the organization has already announced it publicly.
It will take approx eight months to finish the investigation and it is not excluded that, if the FSD v14 is actually found guilty of these dangerous infractions, the NHTSA will impose a recall of all cars affected by the problem. Reminder which, however, will only be virtual given that Teslas update their software via OTA updates.
