Tesla Fatal Crash With Fire Truck Prompted US Regulator Inquiry

The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has requested additional information from Tesla Inc regarding a fatal collision between one of its vehicles and a fire truck in the San Francisco Bay area. Following the incident in Contra Costa County over the Presidents' Day holiday weekend, the agency contacted the manufacturer. According to a tweet from the county fire department on February 18, a Tesla struck one of its trucks that was blocking lanes while responding to an earlier accident.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has spent the last 18 months investigating how Tesla's driver-assistance system Autopilot handles crash scenes involving fire trucks and other first-responder vehicles. It's unclear whether the Contra Costa County driver, who was pronounced dead at the scene, was using Autopilot. A Tesla passenger and four firefighters were also taken to the hospital.

After nearly a dozen crashes involving first-responder cars and trucks, the NHTSA launched the first of two active investigations into possible Autopilot flaws in August 2021. The following month, Tesla's cars received an over-the-air update that improved their ability to detect emergency vehicles. The company issued the software update without conducting a recall, prompting the NHTSA's chief counsel and head of its vehicle defects division to publicly request technical and legal justification. Since then, the NHTSA has opened a second Autopilot defect investigation involving inadvertent braking and expanded its investigation into how the system handles crash scenes.

Autopilot and other driver-assistance systems may have a more difficult time detecting and braking for stationary vehicles than they do when navigating through traffic with other moving cars and trucks. In addition to investigating this matter, the NHTSA has been evaluating Tesla's methods for monitoring and ensuring driver engagement when using Autopilot. Tesla recalled nearly 363,000 vehicles last week that had installed software marketed as Full Self-Driving Beta, which, despite the name, does not make the vehicles autonomous. According to the company's recall notice, the feature may violate traffic laws before drivers, who are responsible for operating the vehicle at all times, can intervene.

Source: Bloomberg