US probing automated driving system use in 2 Tesla crashes

By Tom Krisher
December 22, 2022

Michael Brooks, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Auto Safety, a watchdog group, said it’s long past time for the agency to seek a recall.

“The question is what’s the threshold number of injuries and deaths and cars driving stupidly that we have to see before NHTSA finds that there’s some sort of defect in these cars?” Brooks asked.

The U.S. government’s highway safety agency said Thursday it will send teams to investigate two November crashes in California and Ohio involving Teslas that may have been operating on automated driving systems.

The probes bring to 35 the number of crashes investigated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration since 2016 in which either Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” or “Autopilot” systems likely were in use. Nineteen people were killed in the crashes.

The California crash occurred on Thanksgiving Day involving eight vehicles on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. The driver told authorities that the Tesla Model S was using the company’s “Full Self-Driving” software, according to Highway Patrol report obtained by CNN.

The Ohio crash happened Nov. 18 near Toledo, when a Tesla Model 3 crashed into an Ohio Highway Patrol SUV stopped on a roadway with its emergency lights flashing.

Click here to view the full story from The Associated Press.