WASHINGTON (AP) – According to Reuters, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) will conclude its two-year investigation of Tesla Autopilot and may make a public announcement soon.
“We’ll get to a resolution,” said Ann Carlson, Acting NHTSA Administrator, in an interview at the agency’s headquarters. “It’s really important that drivers pay attention,” she added of modern driver assistance technologies in general. It is also critical that driver monitoring systems accommodate for humans’ tendency to over-trust technology.”
She declined to comment on how the Tesla probe may be concluded, but did say that “hopefully you’ll hear something relatively soon.”
NHTSA escalated the investigation into 830,000 Tesla vehicles, which it first launched in August 2021, to an engineering analysis in June 2022, a mandatory step before it could potentially demand a recall. The NHTSA requested updated responses and current data from Tesla in the investigation last month.
The NHTSA previously stated that information prompted concerns about the efficacy of Tesla’s warning technique, which aims to compel driver attention.
According to the EPA, in 2022, nine of 11 vehicles in earlier crashes displayed no driver engagement, or visual or chime alerts, until the last minute before a collision, while four displayed no visual or chime alerts at all during the last Autopilot use cycle.
