Not sure what to make of this.
Federal auto safety regulators are investigating why Tesla has repeatedly broken rules requiring it to quickly tell them about crashes involving its self-driving technology, a potentially significant development given the company’s plans to put hundreds of thousands of driverless cars on U.S. roads over the next year.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a filing on Thursday that Tesla’s reports on “numerous” incidents involving its driver assistance and self-driving features were submitted far too late — several months after the crashes instead of within five days as required.
The probe comes two months after the electric vehicle maker run by Elon Musk started a self-driving taxi service in Austin, Texas, with hopes of soon offering it nationwide. The company also hopes to send over-the-air software updates to millions of Teslas already on the road that will allow them to drive themselves.
Investors enthusiastic about such plans have kept Tesla stock aloft despite plunging sales and profits due to boycotts over Musk’s support for U.S. President Donald Trump and far-right politicians in Europe.
The safety agency said the probe will focus on why Tesla took so long to report the crashes, whether the reports included all the necessary data and details and if there are crashes that the agency still doesn’t know about.
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment, but the agency noted that the company has told it the delays were “due to an issue with Tesla’s data collection,” which Tesla says has now been fixed.
The new investigation follows another probe that began in October into potential problems with Tesla’s self-driving technology in foggy weather and other low visibility conditions, which has been linked to several accidents including one death. That probe involves 2.4 million Tesla vehicles.
The issue of how safe Tesla’s Full Self Driving mode is has been a longstanding bit of background, and I’ve never quite known what to make of it. I guess I never believed that any agency under Trump would take it seriously, no matter what the state of his relationship with Elmo is. I’m happy to be wrong about that. For sure, I have no trouble believing that Elmo was lax in making those crash reports to the feds, that’s 100% consistent with everything we know about him. It still remains to be seen if this actually amounts to something in the end.
This one is easy.
As far as Muck is concerned, rules, like the laws of physics, are only for people with less than 10 billion dollars. He can’t be limited by something so insignificant as regular people’s health and well-being. That’s what NDAs are for.
If he wants to mass produce a glitchy, self-driving, flesh-shredding, 3-ton rolling box cutter featuring razor sharp exterior panels that randomly detach and fly through the air like giant shuriken, he’s not going to be stopped by job-killing safety regulations. Actual humans being killed is acceptable collateral damage and a cost of doing business. After all, sometimes geniuses have to smash some human beings to be all futuristic and innovative.
Am I right?