By Chris Kirkham
LOS ANGELES, June 16 (Reuters) - Two U.S. senators are asking the nation’s traffic safety regulator to examine Tesla's self-published crash statistics for its “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) driver-assistance system, following a Reuters investigation last month that found the EV maker was exaggerating its safety claims.
Democratic senators Edward Markey of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut sent a letter to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)
on Monday, citing the Reuters report and saying the analysis underlying Tesla’s FSD safety statistics is “weak and misleading,” creating “an urgent safety problem.”
The letter asks NHTSA to write back by July 7 to answer a series of questions, including whether the agency has evaluated Tesla’s FSD safety claims or asked for the underlying crash data used to make the claims. The senators also urge NHTSA to strengthen reporting requirements for companies using self-driving technology or advanced driver-assistance systems like Tesla’s FSD, saying the agency has no way of knowing whether “public safety claims bear any relationship to reality.”
Tesla and NHTSA did not respond to requests for comment.
The Reuters examination last month found that Tesla CEO Elon Musk and other leaders over the past year have increasingly cited statistics they say prove FSD is up to 10 times safer than human drivers. Researchers interviewed by Reuters said Tesla exaggerates the technology’s safety by comparing a rate of crashes in FSD-piloted Teslas that triggered airbag deployments to a U.S. crash rate for all vehicles that includes far less severe accidents.
The company also compares its cars to the average U.S. vehicle, which is much older than the average Tesla. That distorts the results because automakers have gradually introduced new safety features that reduce crashes.
Tesla has also presented the inflated safety data to European regulators in its efforts to secure EU approval of FSD, Reuters reported earlier this week.
(Reporting by Chris Kirkham in Los Angeles; Editing by Anna Driver)
